Life finally seems to be settling into B School ways. Getting up at 7:30 AM to attend classes or slogging for Econ assignment or fighting with the groupmates over marketing case is now becoming acceptable. Thats going to be the way life for next 10 or so months. & I am not complaining!
When I first came to this place, all I heard was that life would be hell. 1 yr MBA is not for weak hearted, blah blah blah. Dont think its that bad. Lot of it is hype. Ultimately it all boils down to simple things like managing your time well. There would always be people who would excel in acads, participate in extra cirriculars & not miss on the other learning aspects as well. Only thing is ... they operate at better efficiency levels. & I think a B School punishes you for not being efficient. Its not an option.
The part about ISB I am liking most is .. the sublime quality of faculty & the opportunities available to improve yourself.
Enough has been said about faculty already. I wouldnt harp on that much more but only thing I can say after 4 weeks here is that a great prof can make a difference between going over a subject & really liking it.
As regards opportunities .. the clubs activities & the talks by Biz leaders are best examples.
Clubs give you access to people who are also focussed on your area of interest. Obviously most people see it as an activity to improve the marketibility of their resume but if properly done, these activities will make one a better person I believe.
Regular talks are another interesting thing here. Every now & then some biz leader comes to share his insights about his career, company & Biz world in general. Yogesh Gupta, the CTO of Computer Associates came last week to share his wisdom about succeeding in IT industry. Today, Mr.
Thierry Moulonguet, EVP & CFO of Nissan Worldwide shared his gyaan about famous turnabout that
Carlos Ghosn & his team brought about at Nissan.Perfect example of globalisation. A Brazilian born manager turned around an alliance between a reeling Japanese automaker with a French company. He vowed to quit if Nissan didnt turn profitable soon !
We have a panel discussion tomm titled 'Do B-Schools add value?'
& it is being attended by Arun Maira of BCG India, IIMA's director & 3 other industry executives. These guys know more about B School education in Indian that anybody else. Would be interesting to hear from the horse's mouth.
Only crib in life now seems to be that this class is too competitive. When most of the class scores 90%+ in assignments, it does create a lot of peer pressure. & Frankly, I dont understand why everybody should be running after grades. Only the consults/I Banks look for grades. & 90% of class aint gonna be landing in a McK or a GS by any measure of imagination. Then why screw up the entire experience only mugging up & fighting for every single mark. There was a concern raised by one of the profs about purpoted honor code violation taking place for assignment submission (ppl are not supposed to collaborate to complete assignments unless mentioned otherwise). I dont understand this, when everybody realises that there is an incentive to break the rules or atleast a disincentive to follow the rules, how can violation not take place. Blame the Mck's & GS's of the world. I hope majority understands that one isnt a winner only if he/she bags a Strat Consult/I Bank job.
Anyways, must stop cribbing & accept this too as a fact of life. People will mug & raise the bar for others. :-
End terms in 9 days from now. I gotta lots of catching up to do. Will probably blog next after exams.
