Parties begin!
Friday, July 29, 2005
The term begun this week and so the parties begun this weekend! Yesterday we had the section-B party and we had good fun playing and dancing, even though I am running temperature. Lots of talented people out here and we get to know only during some small parties like this.
As I said, there are lots of activities happening this weekend... talks by eminent people like Mr. Sanjiv Bhasin, CEO, Rabo India Finance Pvt Ltd who is taking a session on 'Careers in Corporate and Investment Banking' and Dr. K R V Subramanian, CEO of Ascendum systems talking about 'Business Opportunities and Challenges in eLearning'. Dr. KRVS was earlier Professor of Computer Science and Dean of Distance Learning at BITS, Pilani.
We have 5 courses this term and s week's classes are over...
Operations Management is taught by Prof. Sunil Chopra (Kellogg) / Prof. Sudhakar Deshmukh (Kellogg),
Managerial Accounting is taught by Prof. Sri Sridharan (Kellogg),
Entrepreneurship is taught by Prof. S Venkataraman (Darden) / Prof. Ramakrishna Velamuri (IESE),
Corporate Finance is taught by Prof. Rangarajan Sundaram (Stern) & Bhagwan Chowdhry (UCLA) and
Leadership Development Program is taught by Prof. Rajeshwar Upadhyay
I like all the courses this term except for LDP. People's opinions about this course on varied.
This is just my opinion about it. I don't think the course is being taught in the right way. First and foremost, I can't relate what was taught in the first 2 classes to anything called leadership. In the first class, I could not decipher if I was sitting in a biology class or a spirituality class!! Second class, I was left with a feeling of sitting in a psychology class!! And I don't enjoy any of these at 2.30 pm for 2 hours.
I believe that it is a professor's ability to raise interest in the students. Any boring course can be made interesting by the way it is taught and it is not to be done by threatening. I strongly believe that a student's failure is equally attributed to the professor teaching the course. And I have seen many professors here who have the great ability and a few who don't!
Author: Raghini » Comments:
Thursday, July 28, 2005
Term-3 begun on monday... I have seen this for 3 terms now. In the first week, I feel like something hard has hit us!! The readings are always more for the first 2 classes and I dont know if the 4-day term break makes us forget learnings about 'How to sleep less?'. Just one more class to go and then the first weekend of term-3 would begin. This weekend, we have comparatively lesser work compared to the following weeks, but hopefully I should not be too lazy. Lots of activities happening around the place.
Today, TiE-ISB connect, annual event organised by ISB and hyderabad chapter of TiE begun in ISB. The Andhra Pradesh CM inaugurated the meet in the morning. There are lots of events including the business plan presentations today evening. Its a must-attend event for aspiring entrepreneurs.
Other interesting stuff, yesterday I turned 23. I cut 2 cakes at 12 am, one from my quadies and the other from my study group mates. I also got dunked in the swimming pool when it was freezing in the middle of the nite... part of the ISB tradition! Didn't sleep after that as we had a assignment submission, case to prepare and a presentation to make for the classes in the day, which deprived me of my sleep. Attended classes from the morning till 4.30 pm and missed a lot of calls during the day. In all, it was a different kinda Bday and left me with a feeling that I am growing up!!! :)
Author: Raghini » Comments:
A Game of Cards
Sunday, July 24, 2005
I have just come back from another group work... this was no assignment to be submitted... but a lot of games of cards which left us playing for about 5 hours tonight! We started with a few games of 'Ace' but as the crowd gathered we decided to play 'Literature'. I have played this game much earlier (I think I played in BITS) and its a great game of talent and memory. Each game lasts for at least an hour and we played about 3-4 games today... good fun and the most memorable event of the term break (till now...)
Tomorrow, we have 'Treasure-Hunt' here... another event which brings back memories of BITS. We used to have this every semester there and myself and my wingies (we call ourselves 'Screamz' used to participate in all of them). Hope I get to play tomorrow's event...
Author: Raghini » Comments:
Term Break
Saturday, July 23, 2005
Did I just post that Term-2 got over... term break is also nearing the end!
CS project demanded an all niter but the work at the end was really good. With less than 2 hours of sleep in 40 hours, yesterday night when I hit the bed, I had no clue when I would wake up. At last my dream 15 hour sleep happened and I woke up for a late lunch... Thats the best part of the term break. :)
Met my Aikya family one evening during the break... Mr. D.V.Manohar of Shakti group. Met him at the Manohar Hotel and I should say the variety of snacks served to us was 'wonderful'. We were also lucky to meet Mr.VP Singh, ex-chairman of IFCI and currently the Financial services head of Deloitte consulting. It was a good discussion and I was amazed at Mr. Manohar's success as an entrepreneur even though he started at the age of 20.
We have classes from monday and we would be having loads to read for the first class of the 3 courses on monday and 2 courses on tuesday. I am yet to even see the sylabus... hope to start reading when my apartment is less haunted... awaiting my quadies return tomorrow.
Today is my dad's 50th birthday. I bought him a shoe which he had wanted some time back. My mom and sisters had got him a diamond ring. He was very happy when I spoke to him today and said this was his best birthday.
Author: Raghini » Comments:
Haunted!
Wednesday, July 20, 2005
... thats how ISB looks during the term breaks. I see a few human souls in the dining hall, else the campus is empty. Where is everyone? Most of the students have gone home for the break and the rest are roaming around in the city and a few like me sleep for more than half the day!
We are having badminton matches in our section from today and I played and lost already. Should play more games like the way I used to play earlier. But where to fit in the time?
Watched the movie 'Bourne Identity' in the evening... good one with Matt Daemon in the lead role. He acts as an CIA assasin who loses his memories to be chased by his own men. I am going to watch the new Tom Cruise starrer 'War of the Worlds' in a few minutes. I already have a bad headache, but I just feel like watching more movies!
Author: Raghini » Comments:
Done with Term-2!!!
Tuesday, July 19, 2005
How fast? Hmm… we are all 25% MBAs now. It seems like I just started. Yee...Yaa..Hoo... continues :)
We had Macroeconomics and Competitive Strategy papers yesterday and today we had Marketing Decision making and Decision models & Optimization exams. Macro and DMO were good papers but the other two, I had no clue! Same applies to the same courses for the term, though I enjoyed Markstrat during the term.
Amidst professors who don’t return our answer papers to us because they want to repeat the questions again in other places, a special mention needs to be made about professor Krishna Kumar who gave us an amazing macro paper. It’s not like I knew everything, but there were 6 applied questions which were from recent Financial Times articles as recent as London blasts and we were to apply the concepts learnt in class to analyze these articles. This is the course I liked a lot this term and all credits to the professor who turned most of us into Classical Economists and encouraged us to ‘Shift-the-Graphs’… someone who firmly believes in his concepts and has the ability to convince the class in just 5 lectures. He is a guy with a lot of energy and has been teaching us in and out of class. He is always surrounded by a bunch of students even during lunch and dinner… Kudos to the professor who won the Best professor award last year and I hope wins this year too.
Exams over… term break begins… all my friends are going home and I am going to be Home-Alone for the next 4 days! There is a comp-strat project to finish tomorrow. Other than that, my sexy sleep awaits me. Hope term break is good fun, so that I can start Term-3 with energy on Monday.
Author: Raghini » Comments:
Random thoughts
Saturday, July 09, 2005
I am currently working on my Competitive Strategy project and wanted to take a break... This page which has been kept in solitude for the past week because of my no-sleep schedule beckons me for attention!!
The project I am working on is an analysis of the Globalization strategy followed by Dr.Reddy's Laboratories. I am learning a lot not only about the strategies but also about the pharmaceutical industry because of all these research.
Term-2 has just one more week of classes. Phew... it just started... It seems to be the fastest phase of my life!
Just a thought: The best professors who come to teach us are the most down-to-earth people I have ever seen. Prof. Mark Finn, Prof. Anjani Jain, Prof. Jagmohan Raju and Prof. KrishnaKumar are not only good at their respective academic areas but also masters at stimulating student interest and making us understand even the fundamentals. And still, they are very much approachable and the most humble people I have seen. I am sure this is one of the reasons they are the best at what they do!
Author: Raghini » Comments:
Great news!
Saturday, July 02, 2005
All the efforts we put in as a team yesterday night, worked very well to our advantage. Now we are ranked 2nd among the 12 industries and thats a great improvement from the 7th position we were in last time. My group rocks inspite of all the heated discussions we had yesterday... maybe such diverse ideas is what brings the best results out to the front!
Today we had a screening of the "Commanding Heights" economics movie. Its actually a 6 hour screening, of which our professor showed us about 2 hours of clippings. It was pretty interesting and it was good that a big crowd turned up for the optional screening after a gruelling night for Markstrat. But many including me were fighting to keep ourselves awake for the two hours with less than 3 hours of sleep in the past 36 hours! I am beginning to like economics and I hope I understand it more, but my little brain needs a lot more direction to get the big picture.
The Wimbledon women's finals just got over and Venus Williams won over Davenport. It was an amazing match (longest championship match in history) and it required incredible stamina and dedication from both of them to display such remarkable talent for a little less than three hours. Congratulations to both of them.
Author: Raghini » Comments:
Perfect all-niter
Did I say I am going to have a busy weekend? Well, that must have been an understatement. We started our Markstrat meeting at 5.30 pm yesterday evening and we just finished it at 7 am in the morning!! I hope the efforts would yield good results, but I must say I learnt a lot about the simulation this time than the previous decisions... We still have half way to go and I am sure there will be lots more to learn.
At the end of it, I am too tired to sleep that I played TT with my study group mates! Maybe I should sleep now :)
Author: Raghini » Comments:
3/16 of an MBA
Friday, July 01, 2005
Done with the Global Economics midterm examination... and that makes it half the term-2 complete and 3/16th of my MBA complete!! The past couple of days were spent in preparation for this exam(at last no assignments and only studies) and the paper was pretty simple. But its all relative out here and I can imagine the crowd at the top. There was a lot of improvement in the way we prepared for this term's exam compared to the previous term. I dont know about everyone but atleast in my apartment, we were chilled out... someone has to get us back to seriousness and put a child lock for the television at home!!
If I ever think, its friday evening and its the weekend, I am doomed. We have a Markstrat decision to submit tomorrow morning and its gonna be an all-niter to complete the same. Markstrat is a marketing simulation used by Prof. Jagmohan Raju (God of Marketing) and we work in our study group as a firm trying to do R&D, produce, launch and market our 'Sonite and Vodite' products. We compete against 4 other firms in the industry and the campus would be full of 'SONO', 'SIBI', 'SEXY' and 'SOLD' product talks. Right now our firm is the middle of the rankings and the whole nite is gonna be spent to break into the top 5... maybe top 3... who stops me from dreaming!
Author: Raghini » Comments:
