Tuesdays

Tuesdays with Morrie.
no, this is not going to be a review of the book. i just have one thing to say.
read it. it is worth the 3 hours.

The Second Impression!

I have always prided myself on being able to correctly “read” a person within my first few meetings with him/her. My reading of a person, the “gut” feeling I get, would invariably be correct, at least 95% of the times. There have been a lot of scenarios in my college life, my professional life, and now again in my college life that I had formed an opinion about a person, which was not shared by my friends, and then they have come back and expressed the same opinion, after they got to understand it through experience (some good, some bad!).

But ISB gave me a couple of cases where I have been wrong. Pleasantly wrong. Which means, a person who I thought was most “unfriendly”, actually turned out to be quite nice. Let’s call this person X (rule 1 on my blog – no names!). When I first met X for the first few times, I had thought that X was “one of those types” who was aloof, not-mingling-with-everybody types. Although this opinion was formed with very few interactions, my special ability to correctly read people, which I thought was nearly infallible, led me to believe that this indeed, was the case. But how I was pleasantly surprised!
Over a period of time, I got a chance to interact with X, not out of choice mind you, but out of compulsion. One of the first things X told me was this.

“I am a little bit weird. So you might need to get used to this.”
I told X “I don’t think you are weird” But then I didn’t complete my sentence and if I had, then I wouldn’t be writing this post! The part I didn’t complete was “But I think you are arrogant”! :)

But over the past few weeks I have realized that this was one of those rare occasions when I had made an error of judgment. X came out to be a real sport and is funny, whacky and sometimes weird (albeit in a nice manner!) too.
I was pleasantly surprised to realize that there were some common things in terms of obsessive compulsive disorders, finding-stuff-funny-which-others-don’t, finding-things-ridiculous-which-others-don’t etc.
And that dont-try-to-talk-to-me-i-am-not-interested attitude kind of slowly changes once you got to know X.
So X is not arrogant, but is cool! Period. :)
So I am going to be careful going forward to make sure that I have sufficient interactions before I conclusively decide about how people are! But no, that does not mean that I am going to give up my intuitive powers!! No way!
It still is statistically significant! :)

Why?

What’s wrong with us, guys?
Why? Why do we always break out into a clap in the middle of the class, startling the professor, who looks absolutely astonished, startling those poor sleeping beauties, who try their best to fight against the sweet lullaby of sleep but fail miserably? This is probably the most visible form of mass mentality that I have seen at ISB. We seem to be waiting for some arbitrary spark somewhere to gleefully clap and thump our desks. Agreed that there are some absolute gem of comments passed by some of our professors which deserves a wide round of applause, but aren’t we taking it to the extreme?

And then the standing ovation. Well, I do not know whether it is politically correct to say this, but do we need a standard ovation at the end of each professor’s final class? I mean, I completely agree that all the professors have done and will do an absolutely terrific job in imparting the knowledge to us (whether we imbibe it or not is of course our prerogative) and in keeping the class lively and in their passion and exuberance to teach. But a standing ovation? Really?
If we do it at the end of each final class, doesn’t it lose its meaning and sanctity when we do it for a professor who probably is the best of the lot?
I am not passing nor want to pass a moral judgment, but to do this every time, in my opinion is an overkill.
Let me not be caught on the wrong foot here. The professors deserve each and every ounce of respect and adulation that we give/have for them, but let us not make a mockery of a tradition/practice which needs to be used with a little restrained alacrity.

And then the basic etiquettes. I am sure I am not going to earn a lot of popular brownie points by writing this, but hey, gimme a break.
When a person is speaking or about to ask a question in the class, how can you cut her/him off? There are something called soft skills and etiquettes. If you want to discount those, there is at least something called manners.
We pride ourselves by saying that the student body is rich with experience et al, but hey, if we don’t display the minimum levels of manners, then what is the point in glorifying the “rich experience”? Don’t we all learn some basic etiquette during our career? Why is that forgotten in the class?

And, last but not the least. Gross misuse of the e-mail form of communication to the point of being rude.
I mean, if I get a mail where the person has written “Please don’t reply to all”, I certainly wouldn’t want to hit the “Reply all” button, particularly so, if the mail is going into the mailboxes of 400 odd students. I can think of only two reasons for doing this.
One is that you are rude and attention seeking to the point of being obnoxious.
And the second one is too nasty to be put up on this public forum.
Come on guys, respect other people’s privacy and don’t intrude onto their personal space unnecessarily. If you think that you have lots of fans who are mad enough to wait for that next arbitrary mail of yours, please create a personal list of them and make use of it.
Of course, there are certain topics which would be beneficial to the entire student body and in that case each and every one of us should judiciously make use of it.
And of course, I am not a jerk to say that you should never send funny stuff or a forward or an arbit reply once in a while.
But doing a reply all just for the sake of it and doing it with regularity, particularly when the sender has requested not to do a reply all, well, not the most proper thing to do. Grow up!

The Transition

It is one week of term 2 at ISB and I have slowly realized that I am almost done with the transition from being a techie to a cold blooded (read “competitive”) management student! It is really term 2 and its subjects that make us feel as of we are undergoing a management program. VV, one of my groupie could not have said it better when he commented that “It feels almost like as if we are playing the Age of Empires game”.
How true. I mean it is not just Markstrat, but the other subjects as well. Probably with the exception of Macro.

Markstrat has been an amazing experience till now, although we are yet to see the repercussions of the decisions made by us as a team, I am sure the learning experience from this simulation game is going to stay with us forever. This will be the closest possible way to mimic the decision making process in an industry and I am so glad that ISB, like the other premier schools, provides us this opportunity. These are the benefits that come with studying in a school like ISB and the fact is that these kinds of advantages are not known to potential applicants and the general public. The professor for the subject is very soft spoken, which according to me is a rarity at ISB!

Then there is CompStrat. The best of the cases out there, explained to you by a professor who takes you through it in a thought provoking manner, covering the salient points and at the same time making us think beyond the surface to actually sitting and computing the monetary effect of a decision point in the case, what more do you need? When the prof makes a point in the case, which is as logical as it would get, it makes you wonder why the hell didn’t you think about it in the first place?

The Decision models class is yet another interesting topic and the MCS is something which I had always wanted to understand, right from when I had read about it when going through some readings on the options, purely out of my personal interest. Now that I know what MCS is, I should go back to start reading about options, which is my area of interest! Although the professor is really amazing, with his enthusiasm and energy levels in the class, I guess most of us are simply not able to catch up with his standards and are still not at the level he is assuming us to be at!

Then there is Macro, my favorite. This is one subject which is the closest to what has always interested me and we are lucky to get a professor who is so passionate about the subject and also of teaching at ISB. Here you can read about students (CO 05) voting him the professor of the year.
Overall term 2 makes the student body feel like they have finally left their baggage behind from their previous careers and now feel a major shift in their thought process. This change which was nascent in the first term has accentuated now and is only going to strengthen!

P.S All the professors mentioned here handle the first part of the term 2.

If you decide you don’t have to get A’s....

“If you decide you don’t have to get A’s, you can learn an enormous amount in college”. Though I wouldn’t want to be inspired by this quote (From the book “My life as a Quant” by Emanuel derman and attributed to the legendary physicist I.I.Rabbi), I cannot but help wish that this was the philosophy followed by all the students in all the premier institutes of our country.

When I came to ISB, I had the notion of not wanting to repeat what we did in our undergraduate course at REC, which was to learn by rot and not understand the underlying principles. We have been, as a generation, lucky to have a booming economy waiting for us engineers to pass out of the college and embrace us in the folds of the IT and ITES sectors. But for these sectors, students passing out of the college without a firm understanding of their respective trades would have found it difficult to get a job.
In ISB, with all the world class professors, it would have been ideal for the students to try to understand the finer aspects of a subject and its application in the real world, rather than to cram for exams at the end of the short term.
Let me clarify. To a great extent, this does happen out here, the learning aspect does figure in the priorities of each and every student at ISB and the institute provides a conducive enviroment for the same, with all the world class faculties, state of the art facilities and an amazing library. The only thing that derails a student from the pursuit of knowledge is the over relevance of grades.
Yes, grades does matter and I don’t deny it. But if grades matter with respect to how it is going to help a student perform in the campus recruitment process, then the reason for securing the grades deviates from the ideal reason for which it should have been done.
I can sense that there are a lot of students in the batch who want to learn the subject rather than cram for the exams, but towards the end of the term, the pressure is so high that you tend to somehow master how to do the numericals rather than to understand why you are doing what you are doing. Trust me. I did the same for the term 1 eco paper.
Yes, this will help in scoring good marks, but I cannot help feeling that somehow I lost the essence of what the numericals were testing me on, even though I managed to get the answer correct.

The above observations might look weird or abstract to a lot of people, so let me change track and recommend the book by Emanuel Derman for everyone who is intellectually oriented and also to those who are aspiring to work in an investment bank! :)

I came across this book when it was recommended by one of my senior colleague when I was working with GS technology. I am an ardent admirer of the firm and try to read all possible material about the firm or books written by people who have worked with the firm.
The author of the above mentioed book is famous for the Black-Derman-Troy interest rate model in quantitative finance which he co-developed when he was at GS. In the book, he narrates his experiences as a physicist and then his stint at GS heading the quantitative strategy group.

Adi

Adi walked home, his mind in a state of turmoil. He had got his mid term marks and he had yet again managed to score below 90 in Math. He could sense the look of rage and fury on his father’s face when he would break this news to him. He felt his legs go weak and throat go dry. It was a long walk from the school to his house and he enjoyed this daily trekking, sans on those days when he got his math marks.
Adi was bad with numbers and no amount of pleading about his indifference to this subject could make his dad understand. He simply could not conquer the notions of the elementary arithmetic and always was in a state of daze when kunjunni master went on droning about geometry, in his raucous phlegm cluttered voice.
His father was a mechanic and a god fearing, hard working person. Unlike his group of friends who wasted a good part of their earnings on the local arrack and toddy, adi’s father never dwindled away money. “Raman nair is a man of character” thus the village folks spoke of his father. Adi had lost his mother at a very small age and did not have any recollections of her.
The respect with which the village folks treated his father for his hard work, did not translate into love, which adi had for his dad. His dad was quite adamant about the fact that he wanted adi to do well in his studies, particularly math, and become a collector one day. During those times, this office represented one of the highest seats of achievements that parents would wish for their children. And his father had some notion in him, which was partially correct, that you needed good math marks to succeed in life.

And how he got angry when adi scored below 90. adi would never forget those days when he would have to break the news of getting low marks and the image that came to his mind was his father pushing his plate of porridge away and getting up from the floor in a fit of rage, reaching for the wooden cane and flagging him on his back, till it made red marks. He would then curse math, he would curse his father and for good measure, would curse his mother also, for not being there to take his side in this punishment.
He would cry to sleep on those days and would wake up the next day and take the report to his dad, to be signed for the school. He could never understand the look of sadness in his father’s eyes when he signed the report without muttering a word. Adi knew that his father would not go to work that day.
When his friends boasted about their dad’s job or how they were taken to the nearby pond to learn swimming, adi could not bear to think of his father. He hated him. He hated him because he could not imagine his father loving him. He hated him because he hated math. He hated him because of the marks on his back and thigh, which came from the flagging.

It was the monsoon season. Adi fell ill and could not get up in the morning. He called out to his dad “Accha..enikku schoolil pokan vayya” (“Dad, I am feeling ill to go to school”).
His dad barked back “you rascal, you don’t want to sit in the math class do you? Get ready quickly and scamper off”. This continued for 3 days and adi became weaker day by day. His appetite went out and he was scarcely eating now. He was running a high temperature and he never had the courage or the inclination to tell this to his father.
And then one day, he fainted in the middle of the class. In the math class.
Kunjunni master rushed to the principal’s room and told his about this. The principal, a man of wisdom, came to the class, shooed away the on-looking boys and girls, took a handful of water and poured it on adi’s face. He did not respond. He ran a hand over the boy’s forehead.
“This looks to be serious” he called out to the peon
“Babu, get sulaiman’s taxi and inform raman nair”.
Word was sent to raman nair and adi was taken to the local dispensary.

Adi could feel the principal keeping a wet cloth over his forehead, while the taxi was taking them to the dispensary. He could hear the words and feel their actions. He could not open his eyes. He felt as if he was losing his senses and he could just manage to breathe. He could sense the rancid smell of the dispensary and the hardness of the hospital bed. He could hear the principal enquiring of the peon
“Hasn’t raman nair been informed yet?”
“Yes master saab. He would be here soon”

And then, his father came into the room.
“What is this raman nair, this boy has been running a temperature for the last 3 days. Didn’t he complain of illness?”
“Principal saar, he had told me, I didn’t believe him”.
“You could have at least made sure. I am going back to the school. Let the boy rest for a couple of days. The doctor said he is lucky not to have died”

The door closed behind the principal and adi could feel his father come and sit beside him. He could feel the silence hanging there in the room. He could not open his eyes, still.
Then he heard it. He didn’t know what the sound was. It started as a stutter and then he heard a soft sob. Then the sobs became loud till he could not, but believe his ears, that his father was crying.
Adi was scared in his dazed state also. He had never heard or seen his father cry.
Then it dawned on him. His father was weeping for him. He loved him. It made him feel shameless about his hatred of his father. If only he could open his eyes and tell his dad that it was okay.
All those years of hatred dissolved within him and he could feel the fever draining out of his body, taking along with it, the hatred. He felt at peace and he felt his father’s hand on his forehead. He smiled.

Who are we kiddin!!

A leading magazine comes out with “100 top engineering colleges” list.

Salient points to be noted.

Methodology
“a semi-structured questionnaire was designed and given to senior faculty members in various institutes who had more than ten years of teaching experience in different states.”

Quite innovative.

“In all, 208 faculty members participated in the survey”

Well, that does give us an indication of the standard error of this survey doesn’t it? Remember, the number of colleges being ranked - 100.

Here is the list. Happy bed time reading!

1 Down..7 to go.

As I walked out of the exam room, finishing my last exam of the term and walked up the red bricks stairs towards the now all too familiar ISB main building, with its trademark brick patterns, the thought that was going on in my mind was not about the exam, was not about the relief, was not about the celebrations late in the day (irrespective of how one performed in the exam!), but was about what we had managed to learn in just 5.5 weeks here in the first term and which ones were most close to my heart.
Economics came out as my favorite, not surprising because I have always had flair of math and logic. And the fact that this will be in some way relevant in our career sometime down the future also adds to the likeability.
What surprised me was the choice that my subconscious mind came up with for the second favorite subject.

It was marketing.
Now let me tell you, the average number of hours the junta out here studied for the marketing exam will be 1.21 hours with a standard deviation of 2 minutes. Yes. That’s it. This is one subject that has a costly textbook, a fancy one too, and I can bet you for a 1000 bucks that not more than 1 out of 100 people have gone through all the relevant chapters in preparation for the exam. (400 guys in the batch, work out the math!!)
How do you study marketing? Can you study marketing at all?
I mean, yeah, you can learn all those brand resonance models and push-pull strategy and value based pricing and all. But then, how much of it does a marketing professional get to use in their day job? Isn’t it more of a real-world-constraint-driven game? Will all these perfect models and strategies work in the real bad world?
This might be a fallacious argument with a lot of pitfalls and might be because of my lack of knowledge of the job profiles.
Anyways, the point is, I realized in that flash of moment, that I actually liked the subject, even though I am pretty sure that I am not made for marketing.
Let me get this straight. I don’t like marketing as a subject for which I have to study. Period.
But I like marketing as a science which helps me understand a lot of things which happens around me, which I was not able to understand without my newly gained (limited though!) knowledge.

Accounting came a third because this was a subject which was entirely new to me and I do not foresee myself using this in my career a lot. Yeah, when I do become a CEO and when my CFO (probably one of the CA’s from my class!) gets caught for a fraud, I wont be able to tell that “I don’t know accounting and left it to these guys!”

Statistics – well, all I can say is that I don’t fancy fitting lines and trying to figure out shapes out of nothing! (I know, I am bad at this!)

So the first term finished before we could say “Heteroscedasticity”. Yeah, that’s from the stats class and kind of in one word, represents what I feel about the subject. Something which is huge and cannot be conquered and exotic. I love the word, but not where it came from.

And yes, it’s official now. The rat race has begun. And no. Sarovar is not involved in this.