Tips&Tricks for CP

Tips and Tricks for Class participation(CP):

Disclaimer : The  characteristics mentioned in this blog are purely fictitious. Use it at your own peril.

Before we advise you on the tips and tricks , here are the following stereotypes in the class.

1.       People who raise their hand and wait for their turn

2.       People who raise their hand and assume its their turn

3.       People who get a chance to speak and put others to sleep

4.       People who have already lost hope on class participation

People who belong to category 4, please read further. Everybody else, thank you for your time.

Tips& Tricks

1.       Wear a Govinda style or a flashy red shirt- yellow pants to attract attention. You don’t have to raise your hands after this.

2.       If flashy shirts are on short supply, please create some spare cardboard hands. This will ensure your hands are up all the time.

3.       Get a mike and start with the words “Please let me finish”.

4.       Identify the perennial the CP heroes and give them some Center Fresh (zubaan pey lagaam)

5.       If the whole class is giving one opinion, give an exact opposite opinion even if it doesn’t make sense. The attention has been diverted and you have got the airtime.

6.       Sit next to a CP hero, and the moment he starts to talk, swap your name plate with him. Undo the process, before he catches you in the act.

7.       If you have nothing to contribute, just stand up and start talking about your personal experiences, use appropriate technical jargon according to the subject being taught.

Please email us your experiences after you follow the above tips.

Cheers.

 -Natarajan & Rajgopal Iyengar

Back to School !

To say that last one week just went by, before I could blink an eye would actually not be an overstatement. This is the kind of welcome you get, when you decide to go back to school after almost a decade. Only solace is the pristine surroundings of IIMC, which calms you and makes you  appreciate the finer things in life. From the first week itself, studying till 2 am has become the norm. Our security guard actually put things in perspective when he said that 3 or 4 am will be a daily routine by the next term. Yet in the middle of all this chaos, none of us (at least most of us) are feeling perturbed.  Whenever we have 20 minutes to spare, it’s been getting utilized either by going to the gym, playing cricket or as in my case catching a quick nap.

The classes have been nothing like our engineering days. The commitment to show up in class before time everyday emphasizes on how much we are looking forward to learn. Either that or we are incredibly scared of the professors, and to be thrown out of a class at this age will definitely be an embarrassment. The quality of the teaching has been outstanding till now.  But to do a pre reading, assignment or case study and then listen to 6 hours of lecture will take us some time to get accustomed. Add to that a surprise quiz, which in reality is more of a shocker, makes you wonder about the fairness of life. The word class participation has taken a new meaning altogether. While in the engineering days, we used to hide in the back benches and avoid eye contact with teachers, here one would be lucky to get a chance to put his point through. And the reason is the rich wealth of experience everyone brings to the table. Right from IT classes to Human behavior everybody has a story to share, and unfortunately the instructors have to put their foot down sometimes so that they can at least complete their slideshow without interruption. I have probably learnt more from my classmates and instructors in the last one week than what I learnt in my previous job in the last one year. And that’s precisely why I think everybody should go back to school after a while, just to rekindle the curiosity and to rediscover the child in ourselves. Once we realize this, everything else will fall into place.

The dorm facility has been amazing and the food has been good so far. The best part of the hostel life is the camaraderie you share with your classmates. Although most of us are in our thirties, the hostel has taken us back to our college days. That includes right from borrowing the iron box, giving bumps to class toppers to searching tea and snacks in the middle of the night.

So, that’s pretty much the synopsis of my first week at Joka.Let me end this blog, again with a quote from our beloved security guard “Yeh toh shuruaat hai sir, picture abhi baaki hai”.

And miles to go before I sleep

Yesterday was my last day at my company and I got a lump in my throat by evening. I just could not say goodbye or thank you to my team or my managers. This was the place where I belonged, I was the first recruit for my team back in 2006, when they started our center. I was 25, had no idea where I wanted to go , what I wanted to do. I had quit my previous job (on a whim) on a Monday and already had planned to pack my bags and go back to India. Just applied to a company on a friend’s recommendation. Surprisingly, I got called the very next day and by Thursday I had my personal interview done. There were a couple of directors in the panel, who told me that it doesn’t matter what I know, what matters is what I do with it. I took their word and joined them the next Monday, didn’t care about the money (which I should have) or the field (IB), just went with my gut.

The last six years were fun. Worked in mortgages in the worst possible time, put in long hours, got butchered most of the weekends and yet somehow managed to be on talking terms with my wife :) . I learnt the art of maintaining sanity, even when your best friends get laid off, even when the business folk use choicest of abuses every other day, even when a 5 person team has to do 10 people job due to budget cuts and to top it all, even when after all this most of the team gets a zero bonus due to a “bad year”. Gone were the days when 15-20% bonus made everybody droop, we were thankful just to keep our jobs now. Yet somehow throughout this turmoil I developed an affinity to my company. I could not be bitter at all, for what I learnt at my company far outweighed the hours I put in for them. Made great friends, actually enjoyed my work, and yes a couple of promotions helped the cause as well.

Last year, I thought now was the time for a change and I need to reenergize myself. I wanted to go back to school. Gave my GMAT, applied to a few schools and got admitted in most of them. After going through the economics and logistics part I narrowed upon IIMC. The road was easy till now. In the last couple of months it dawned upon me, how incredibly difficult it is to walk away from everything which you built brick by brick for so many years. I had a family, friends, a home, cars and a steady income. To turn back on everything, pack up the bags and proceed to India has been quite an eye opening experience. Although everybody around me is pretty appreciative, the fear of the unknown looms large. I am pretty sure most of my batchmates might be going through the same kind of emotions in varied degrees. Friday was my last day at work and I still have no clue what I am going to do come Monday.I am 31 now, have a vague idea about where I want to go and what I want to do.Lets hope the next one year journey turns out to be interesting and enjoyable.

Till then, as Robert Frost says in “Stopping by Woods on a snowy evening”
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.