A new term and a new begining!!!

Today heralds Term 2 of my course at MDI. It feels like a new begining all over again. New books, new subjects, new profs... It really feels good.

First of all I want to incorporate all the learnings from the previous term. Term 1 was reeking with inefficiency, late nights, poor planning, tiredness and lethargy. Under the guise of 'BSchool life' I let my schedules go for a toss. Payed little attention in class. No pre-reads. Left everything for the last minute. In short, an engineering hangover.

All that will change from this term. I will sleep early. Get up early. Gym. Pre-readings. Efficient planning. Pay attention in class. No last minute studying. And make the best use of this place called MDI.

I am determined to make myself bloody disciplined, and began that with today. Hope that I can make this schedule last for the term. The first step to managing people is managng yourself.

Raging Bulls

Made it through Livestock, the stock trading competition from IIM A's Confluence. The event is a live trading floor where 50 top teams from across India will be participating for the top place. Our team called the ragingbulls consists of 4 Unnati people. For thse who don't know Unnati is our student initiative research and investment management group (in other words, a Mutual Fund) and me (I'm the non-Unnati guy). Between us we have 6 years worth of investing experience. Dhamija is a big mover, Anee and Goenka are said to handle big portfolios. I have done a bit and Sankalp also has investing experience.

The event kicked off with a qualification quiz of 60 marks which we were supposed to complete in 30 minutes. We have 3 junior teams and 2 senior team participating. Totally we have 5 teams from MDI.

We will be given Rs.25,000/- to trade with over a period of 3 months in the Indian stock markets. During this period we have to trade and produce research papers and justify our purchases. At the end of the period we will be evaluated on the final portfolio position, the cash on hand, the returns we generate and our research papers.

It all looks very exciting. We will be allowed to keep 30% of the profits we generate in addition to the prize money (forgot the actual figure but its pretty huge for small punters like us!!!). All's looking good, Looking forward to an exciting 3 months.....

Its almost over

The agony of the past 2 weeks seems to be nearing an end. Past two weeks have been an high octane existence. Sleep has always come in the wee hours of the morning. The entire night spent completing presentations interspersed with laughter, jokes, PJs, ordering food from the local call centre canteens, etc. Dunno what we would have done had there been no call centres canteens??!!

Eyes bloodshot. Body tired. Pushing the mind and soul for that extra bit every moment....MAN!!! MDI surely has some acad rigour. Sometimes I wonder if it is all necessary. I mean does the measure of a manager cme from how much academic bullshit he can handle.

Enough of gyaan ;-)... Me gotta finish the course on 'Managerial Economics' for tommo exam. It has made me less knowledgable on the topic, though the prof (Dr. Ashra) who teaches us is an exceptional fellow.

Till tommo 12:15 pm its back to exa mode........

The Absence

Hey... If any of you are wondering where the Hell I was...lemme assure you I was right there, in Hell. The week gone by had a tremendous amount of work in the form of end-term submissions and presentations. So much so that I ended up with two bloodshot eyes and a completely pooped out body at the end of it... Today I finally got some well deserved rest. Planning to sleep the cumulative total amount of the entire past weeks sleep. Whew!!! Why MBA?? My job was much better.

Well now that the submissions are almost over...(My acad group reminds me that we still have some work to be done...Nooooooooo!!!!) theres no respite since the end-term exams will start from Wednesday triggering another round of sleepless nights...But mercy me the agony lasts just a four days and even then the chastisement during that period lasts just 2 and a half hours.

Looking forward to Saturday night....the end of Term 1 and consequently 16.66% of MBA (real) and 25% (perceived) ;-) ... since only 4 terms are counted for placements!!!!

Marks, Chlormint and Lays...

Have been receiving the fruits of the long gone mid terms. The grapes are sour. Literally. But the consolation is that I had a tough time during the exams. And under those circumstances I consider myself to have done decently. But sure would have liked to be much much higher up in class. It doesnt help matters that the marking has been arbit at best. A few subjects have marking that defies logic. But then as they say.."You win some, you lose some."

Chlormint is the new flavour in Pradeep's life. So is it for Piyush (Mansur's gr8 gr8 roomie!!!)... Piyush in fact, has access to a lot of Chlormint, (from Prayas) enough to make all the guys from PGPM 05 (maybe even from PGPM 04...you can never be sure with Piyush) run for cover.

Meanwhile, Lays is the new flavour in Mansur's life...