Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Fifth Semester

This semester was the last-semester-without-electives i.e. after this semester our class would be broken into sub-classes and merged with the other section after their choice of elective subjects. Birds of same feather would flock together!

Thankfully this semester, we were free from the calculators (aka our bulky financial calculators) as we had theoretical subjects like - International business environment (IBE), Strategic Management-I (SM), Management of Information Systems (MIS) and Marketing Management-II (MM). And almost all were interesting (:) with MM & IBE leading the pack. SM got interesting only after we requested for a faculty change (in fact this was a memorable sem also because the students were listened, we requested for a faculty change and it happened promptly). In the snap below, we can be seen participating in the Starbucks case with our teams participating in understanding components of value chain:

Prof Amita conducting groups for Value-Chain discussion

There was an interesting thing to note this semester. Students attended the class with more sincerity of the faculty who were relaxed on attendance. When teachers are great, students automatically attend classes.

We spent an enormous amount of time on the email-chain for selection of electives for the next term. To the extent, that people got fed-up and stopped checking those threads. It was the immense patience of the CRs and to name a few - Nilabha & Shivashish who co-ordinated well to finalize a list on electives.

Some more highlights:
- Strategy course done justice by Prof Amita
- Guest lecture (Use of MIS in Social Cause) - http://cgnetswara.org
- Prof Wadhwa & the 2.5 mark daily quiz!
- Bikramjeet (our capable CR and a great friend) left the course for a handsome overseas opportunity
- And the ANNA campaign!!

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

First summer break

After having slogged for almost an year juggling with office and a demanding MBA program finally holidays were here. Yuppie! We had made so many programs but finalized only one - the relaxation event:)

Luckily, I had a not-so busy office too so I felt really relaxed.

The importance of Saturday's was realized in this summer break. The weekend looked real big. It was as if prisoners were let loose for a month and they had gone berserk with their freedom! In fact, the average heartbeat rate decreased - yes (no kidding) I could feel it!



But IIML had ingrained the habit of reading and working hard that after 2 weeks of holidays I took up a project to (long aspired) development of an Android application. The idea in mind was to develop an application that would keep you away from the disturbing SPAM messages. After few weeks of effort "BLOCK SPAM SMS" was developed and is running successfully on thousands of Android phones. The best part is - it is being used more abroad than in India.


As the summer break was closing towards an end - I felt the dreaded feeling of no holidays for an year occupied the mind..