The beginning of the end

Back from a hectic 7 day vacation, the grind begins from tomorrow.
9 subjects, WAC is back and its back with a vengeance.
Fin 2, Marketing 2, OM 2...they are all here and they are bigger and badder.
The last term for the seniors, Chaos, Sangharsh ( the IIMA-IIMB sports meet) ... lots happening around me.
Strangely, it feels nice to be around the campus and in my room.
As a senior said today, "This is the last lap." And I hope to make it count for all it can.

Homeward bound...

Slot 4 ends tomorrow and I will see WIMWI only next year. Going home by the first available train. What a change there has been over this year, a year ago I was worried about where I would be in life and the Sensex was at 20K+.
I have had so many courses over the last 6 months I would be surprised if I can even name all of them. My head feels like a mass of confusion, a smorgasbord of millions of concepts, ideas, cases and formulae. We had so much in accounting yet I feel I haven't learned anything.
Looking forward to this break...it is a full 7 days long. Hopefully I will get some time to sit down and collect my thoughts, make sense of the mad happenings around me over the last 6 months or so.
4 slots, some 15-20 courses, the craziness of summer placements...need a breather.
Looking for a couple of days when I just sit and chill at home before life becomes a little more 'hectic'...maybe I will get bored in these 2 days. If IIMA has taught me anything it is to stretch every minute for what it CAN be worth.
Signing off from WIMWI for year 2008.
See you in 2009, Happy New Year!!

Ethics for baby Wolverines

As in Snapshots from Hell (from where I've borrowed the title of this blog), IIM A has started a non-credit, pass-fail course on Ethics.
Now 'ethics' isn't something that can or SHOULD be taught, not in the least to B-school students.
The result has been very interesting...lectures on diverse topics by the same profs who teach other more b-school subjects, discussions on these topics with profs by those who find something interesting and an infinite scope for ACP (arbit CP in WIMWI lingo).
Shows how well-read and well-informed the profs are, how much thought they have given to not just their own subjects but the world at large. Puts into perspective the 'general awareness' efforts post CAT results. I am not sure I have the capacity to think about one subject so much and these people have informed views on almost anything under the sun.
I don't think having this course makes anyone more ethical, it just lets you know there is a whole world out there for you to think about.
I'll end with the quote from Snapshots from Hell:
"So, anyway, in this ethics unit I take a few philosophers and in- what is it?- eight classes, I go over three basic ways of making value judgments. That's it. After that you all go off to Wall Street. It's like giving an intellectual life to baby wolverines."

Status Update

Lots has happened since the last time I posted.
Here are the 'happenings' in no particular order of importance:
1) I turned 25.
2) I got placed, after many rejections, at BRICS securities in Mumbai for their Quantitative Strategies group. I think I am going to love this internship.
3) Gave finishing touches to thesis and made a PPT. Then presented my work at IISc in my thesis defence. Will get the IISc degree. (Yippee!!)
4) Watched in horror and tremendous, blood boiling anger as Mumbai was attacked less than 24 hrs after I had left.(Deserves a longer post but I am in no mood to rant and rave about something for which words fail me).
5) Back at IIMA, this slot seems more relaxed than the previous one with the tension and work for placements gone.
6) Joined a gym to hopefully gain some weight

Bust!

Last year they said I did not have enough of a fin background.
This year I guess they are saying "We know enough people who are better suited
to interview with us than you."
So much has changed since November 2, 2007. Yet one thing remains the same.
Goldman Sachs won't let me interview with them.

P.S: Last year I wanted to apply for an analyst position at their Bangalore office.
This year it was a summer intern position anywhere in the world they wanted to send me.
Title of blog derived from chapter titled "Goldman or Bust" in "Running of the Bulls".

Ding dong...

You make a resume with all the "relevant" "achievements" of your life. You go through endless
revisions, trying to get maximum impact into each word, stretching the truth to as far as it will go (or your CV checker will let it), you fill every CV relate religiously.
You sell yourself to every company through your SOP-story, you pretty much cover your entire life in the cover letter...and what do you get:
DING,
DING,
DING,
DING,
Most of us 'normal' people here are suffering from this, wonder what the abnormal ones did to be abnormal.
Wondering when this will end!

The Cheetah and the Elephant

One thing that WIMWI practically guarantees is world-class faculty. These people who could have made big bucks in the industry (some have I guess) teach us for what would be peanuts in comparison...reason:Unknown ( my guess is something called passion).

 

Operations Management is a subject that's started in slot 3 and will continue till the end of the year. We are taught by Saralda (Prof Saral Mukherjee). I won't say I appreciate everything about the subject but one thing definitely stands out in Saralda's class ... his passion for the subject. When he speaks about the assembly line or the process flow diagram or Little's theorem, the esteem he holds his subject in and how much he loves it comes shining through.

The metaphor of the cheetah and the elephant as kinds of organizations and operations took my breath away. He has the authority to tell 80 CAT-cracking superachievers "This is why we teach...hope...hope that ONE of you may understand what operations management truly is."

Today he showed a clip of Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times to bring out the difference between an assembly line in the past and modern ones. 

Hats off to you Sir...will be in awe of your passion and hope I can achieve something like that at some stage of my life.