Mad Termination

Yes, I know that I was late. I know that I am lazy. But I could not help the mad pace at which things were happening here. If someone doesnot have proper time management skills, he is literally screwed up. Thank god, I was able to do the right thing at right time and now I am at peace. We have something like 20 halcyon hours from now onwards. After that it will be the same grind.

coming to the topic of the blog, Mad Termination – half term at IIM I

If I were to objectively describe my half the term it would be something like this,

1 cold call

1 presentation

8 assignments

18 exams

23 case studies

0.5 term at iimi

As evident from the above lines, you wont be able to objectively judge what is happening to you. So let me put it in another perspective.

Sometimes, when I look back, the half term seems like a breeze. rest of the time it seems like a full year at my engineering college. I have done several things in the last 4 weeks. most importantly I have changed a lot. I always considered myself as a good time manager. But I have improved a lot after coming here. A typical day here leaves space for everything. And it is not as tough as it is posted to be. But still several people here wake up till 5:30 or 6. you find the place happening at 3 am. Weird but many people do it. I am a little bit conservative when it comes to trading off sleep. So far I was able get a decent 4 hour sleep in the night and another 1-2 hours of nap in the afternoon. But sometimes, when there is a quiz in the afternoon (ideally they happen at 3 pm) it gets really nasty. One thing about the last 4 weeks that was worrying a bit is, news paper reading. I am getting Business line in my room everyday. Despite several mental notes, I was not able to read it regularly. May be lack of motivation. But now that summer placements are stones throw away in the time line, I am planning to start it again with more dedication.

Coming to the academic front, I am doing decently. Not any thing great or hi-fi. We have 8 courses in term one. 2 of them are split in the sense that we have CT upto mids and BTO after mids. 2 of the eight courses are soft ones. Managerial written communication (all about writing reports for your boss) and M oral communication (all about making presentations, giving feedback and listening skills). There is a lot of scope for getting A grade in these courses, provided you are willing to work. Our team has managed to bag a couple of A-s in the MWC and a decent performance in MOC group presentation. Now onwards it will be individual effort as we have individual reports and presentations coming up. There was an accounting course, which for most of the engineers is a terror. Good thing is that, I have managed to get a ‘good’ remark in one of the accounting quizzes. Again the mid term was a major torture. Barely managed to solve the last case and the invigilator snatched the paper from me. I hope I manage to get a decent grade there. Now comes the most troublesome part of my term one. HBW – Human Behaviour at Work. An out and out HR course. Whatever we see in day to day life and work place is explained in geek terminology in this course. Add to it, we have some 500 pages of reading material for this subject. Quizzes were a bad story for me. I managed to get scores like 2.5 and 5 out of 10. But the mid term was fruitful, may be because I have studied, or may be because of efFARTs. The next two are engineer courses. QT and CT. QT was supposed to be an engineers subject. but it was not. I got B- in the first quiz which tells why I have italicized the supposed part. Mid term was no better. But somehow, I have a feeling that I will get a B grade again. CT is computing tools, a morale booster for scores of software engineers lurching in this place. All the components of this course were good except a glitch in the excel quiz. sad thing about this course is that, it carries only 2 credits where all other courses carry 4 credits except BTO. Last course is Eco. It is considered to be a neutral course because; there were not many eco hons. grads in the class and thus the course is conducted on a level playing ground. Quizzes have been good. The best thing about the course is, the faculty. We have an young and energetic person handling this course. No definitions in the quizzes or mid. But they test the underlying concepts very well. I am enjoying this course thoroughly.

That is it. Pretty long post I guess. The last few lines of the above paragraph brings me to the topic of faculty. a contentious issue. But I will try to elaborate more into it in one of my next blogs.

That is all for now.