Good and Excellent can never be together!

While introspecting my sorroundings, I realised that mediocricity and excellence can never go together or rather they are mutually exclusive to each other. I also searched for some good material on this issue and I am writing some text which I believe expresses my feelings on the issue very closely. Here you go...............As per my experience, a mediocre is always seeking to find how to exert minimum effort and receive the maximum reward. According to me mediocrity is the enemy of excellence. Mediocricity is one of the greatest philosophical diseases of our culture. It has infected every aspect of our lives and our society. Tragically it is one ideological disease that is eating away the Indian civilisation. Consciously or sub-consciously, people everywhere seem to be asking, "What is the least I can do and still keep my job? What is the least I can do and still get the best placements? What is the least I can do and still get reasonable grades in school? What is the least I can do and still stay physically fit? What is the least I can do...?" The list is long and can go on and on! These are classic cases and one can see this repeating in n number of situations in everyday life in one form or the other.
In most cases its the helplessness that it creates that pulls my mood down!

Inside Out!

Just finished off the projects.The project on strategy was interesting and there were many learnings from that . However, the International Business project was more of a run of the mill type of report. Sridhar is working on the Finance project and I will get to see it probably on Monday. I think the entire group is worried for Finance project. This is the last chance for everyone to improve upon the grades, cos everyone has sort of screwed the end term exam!Today is the opening ceremony of Bejing Olympics and surprisingly, I am not watching that. I think, this is the first olympic opening ceremony that I am not watching. I still remember fondly, watching the LA and Barcelona games opening ceremony, with awe and delight! I do not know, why such change in attitudes.

The class has really not been able to choose electives as they have wanted. Infact, the number of electives floated were quite less than what we expected for the final 2 terms. The reasons given were lack of time with teachers or no teachers at all or some administrative reason. Few people chased some of the teachers and when they agreed, the EPGP committee refused. This saw hectic activity amongst the students which translated into actions like giving representations in person and by email to the director and everyone concerned. But the end result was nil! We have to opt from optionals already floated. The committee final decided not to allow any teachers to float any new optionals. As far, as I am concerned I am ok with the optionals. I think, I have got what I wanted, but it would have still better if certain teachers like Prof Ganesh and Prof Chandrashekar had offered couple of electives. Few students are quite unhappy by the way the requests were turned down. But alas! Its part of life. You win some and loose some, you never won e'm all!

Feeling a bit light today after finishing off the projects. Officially, the 4th terms ends on the 17th August 2008. I have already seen assignments coming my way for the 5th term from some of the professors like our favourite Prof V.K Gupta! I will write about Prof VK Gupta in my next post. He is one of the stars of IIM Indore and I think he is the most liked by students not only for his knowledge but for many other things..........

Time and tide await none eh?

As I write this post, we are almost at the fag end of 4th term. To say in other words, we are already 66.66% MBA ! Just 14 more days and we will move into the 5th term, the second last term of our course. Time has literally flew past by. I believe this year( starting Oct 07), has been the most hectic year in my entire life and I see more is coming in the next two terms. The 5th and 6th terms are basically full of electives. I have chosen a mix of finance and strategy. Finance is what is giving me jitters! Uptil now ,though I have studied quite a bit of finance but still I am far from comfortable. Its well known that certain subjects in term 5 and 6 require very good understanding of corporate finance and more over the teachers in finance are said to be brutal! So, I am mentally preparing myself for the grind. I sincerely hope, I do well in finance in my next 2 terms.
IIM campus during this time of the year is at its best. The weather at Indore is awesome and the entire scenery inside and outside the campus is lush green! Its so soothing to the eyes that I spent many minutes ( we do not have hours at IIM to do anything except studying or preparing for some presentation or project etc etc. )sitting in my hostel room balcony, enjoying the scenes of the surroundings. I feel completely at peace and extremely happy from inside, whenever I am there. My balcony opens onto a hill slope from where one can see the main gate of IIM campus. The slope is not very wide but its quite substantial in length. During this part of the year, the entire hill slope looks stunningly beautiful with flowers and lush green grass plus trees.Early morning there are visitors, white birds.Many of my classmates mistook them for ducks. They look very pretty in the green background. They come in flock of 5-6 and roam on the entire hill side and they go as quietly as they come, roughly before noon! I have taken some very good pictures of our guests basking in glory!
Just few days back, we had a guest lecture by MD & CEO of Morgan Stanley in India, Narayan Ramchandran.It was an awesome lecture and our guest went about giving us tips on how to develop and sustain the art of reading.It was one of those speeches that awed the entire audience be it students or the faculty. I heard one of the professors commenting after hearing the speech that he felt very small before the guest and the speech has inspired him to read and read more with dedication. The prof is well respected and has tons of experience, that speaks about the quality of the lecture.
Time to work on the Internationa Business project, more to come later............