Memories from the golden years of my life (9)

Yes Manish, I do remember the look on your face after the finance papers … and I will devote once complete blog to that look … but for the time being my heart is beating fast because I have no clue what is Weighted Average Cost of Capital … and I have no sense what happens in textile and refining … and I don’t seem to recognize even a single name on that board from the people I met … and my head is spinning like never before … and I write my mobile number against my name on the list so that others can contact me … and the alarm is now ringing … its time already for me to go to next day’s lectures…

Somehow we tolerated next day’s lectures … it was day 2 at IIML and I am already using tolerated … for one, I was still to get over previous day’s tiredness and two … some of the lectures like that on IT infrastructure and library management ... well I thought were delivered by absolutely incompetent personalities … and well could be definitely left for later. To top it all there was presentation in the evening …

In the break I contacted the others in my group (only a few of them) … I don’t remember all but one was Himanshu Jain (an absolutely unclean guy … quite literally so … but I struck a cord with him …somehow) .. and Manish Kumar Jain (this guy seemed to know what is Weighted Average Cost of Capital … man …wasn’t I relieved to know that). He explained the concept to us … it dint seem that difficult but at the same time I could not understated it fully … somehow we managed to crap together a few slides… it was decided that Manish will present since the rest of us hardly knew what was on the slide… A few students escaped from the hall CR203 … which clearly showed the level of enthusiasm shown by the batch. This was not appreciated by the faculty and a severe reprimanding was given by the Chairperson, PGP. But all was fine till the evening.

And then began that signature IIML presentation … the conversations went something like this:

S – Senior
J - Junior

S – You yellow shirt, you start the presentation
Pointing towards a guy hiding behind others
S – Man, who wears green to a presentation?
There is another dude who wore a green formal shirt to presentation
S – Why aren’t you dressed in formals? Is there a party going on
The guy was not wearing a tie.
J – (Mumbles something which is hardly audible)
S – Okay start now. We don’t have all the time in the world
3 or 4 seniors are shouting from the back
S – What ghastly slides have you made?
Disgust is written all over their face
S – How much time did you take?
Inevitably the first person was asked this question followed by the entire class of seniors laughing at the presenters
J – 2 hours
Man.. I just put in 45 mins .. am saying 2 hours .. and the look on their face .. well I feel like running away
S – That’s it! So you think you will put in 2 hours of effort and you will pass!

Followed by more laughs ... need I mention this?


Ill post on my specific experience next time ….

Memories from the golden years of my life (8)

I had initially thought of attending that guest lecture .. but dropped it just to prepare for an exam at 9:30 in the night. This was just the beginning. Beginning of sacrifices. Beginning of deciding what my priorities are. Beginning of what was going to be a long journey of trying to get a bite of everything … everything literally. I reached the examination hall at 9:20. I was made to sit in CR101 which was also my classroom for first year. There were some strict looking seniors with papers. Finally, after the room got full, they distributed the papers.

I was shocked to see the paper. It has been almost 3 years now and I don’t remember too much but I think the paper had broadly 3 sections – Finance, Marketing and Management GK. Of the three … just imagine I thought Management GK was the best! … I who had never been good at GK! The reason being I could hardly understand what the questions said in other two sections. Marketing was full of jargon though still we could understand English. It was Finance that sent a shiver down my spine. I knew nothing!

Dreading awful things, I turned my face around. Believe me it was such a relief to see blank faces all around me. Anyways, for one hour I broke my head on that paper. One of the guys who had completed all that he knew (and I am guessing it was as good a nil) wanted to leave the room in half an hour only. But the seniors did not allow that! They said we have to be there for complete three hours! So after I was done, tried going off to sleep on the chair only, though could not manage to catch any sleep at all. I was surprised to find some guys sleeping so well. I distinctly remember the senior having to shake Helly up, to wake her when they finally decided to let all of us go. As we came out of the hall, I was glad to find that like me .. the others also knew nothing. And I learnt my first lesson at HelL .. without anyone even mentioning it to me.. “What others are doing and how well are they doing it will be equally important to me if not more, than what I ought to be doing”

All was not well … As we came out, there was another notice on the same notice board. We had been divided into groups of five and had to make a presentation on the topic assigned to us, the very next evening after the induction lectures. The topic assigned to my group was something like this :

“Comparison of Weighted average Cost of Capital for refining and textile sectors”