Day 443 - 31st March 2012

Today was the big day. Spent the first half of the day packing. It seems incredible but MCSA work continued to keep us busy for the first half of the day. We all had to gather in the auditorium by 430 before the batch photograph would be clicked on the cricket field. The convocation ceremony went off quite well - doing the rehearsals actually made sense ;-) The chief guest was Mr. Arun Poorie, Editor in Chief of the India Today Group. He spoke really well. He shared with us his experiences and learnings from a career in media that spans more than 3 decades. The ceremony was followed by dinner in the Nescafe Plaza.

Had our last batch meet in the audi at 1130. Thanked TI for arranging for a webcast of the convocation. Placecomm was given a standing ovation for the brilliant job that they did this year. This was followed by a pillow fight :P Football was played under floodlights one last time. This is the beginning of the end.

Day 413 - 1st March 2012

Woke up at noon. Had to go to the city for some work in the afternoon. Used it as an excuse to have lunch at Chawla's - a punjabi food place at Vastrapur. Pretty decent food. Since its my last month out here, have made an Ahmedabad bucket list - a list of places to go to in the city before March 31st. So Chawla's is now off the list ;-) Got back to campus by 4. Had a little MCSA work to care of in the evening. Went to the gym for sometime before dinner. Post dinner started work on the international marketing assignment. There was a case study of KFC 's strategy in China that had to be analyzed. Got done with that by midnight. Placecomm elections will begin in sometime. It seems only like yesterday that we had our placecomm elections :-) Will attend the elections before calling it a day.

Day 343 - 28th November 2011

Got back to campus by 2 in the morning and slept for a good 8 hours. Had a late start to the day with a CIM lecture post lunch. The lecture covered the various sampling techniques used in qualitative research and how it is different from sampling in quantitative research. Also had a session on various the current scenario of various types of industries as a build up to the placement week. The industries discussed were retail and IT. The session went on till 9 in the night. Dinner in the mess was south indian food, which meant there was a huge exodus of people to Chota. Decided to go out to a chinese place nearby called crazy noodles, a very 'hatke' restaurant which serves decent food. Got back to campus by 11 in the night. Placecomm had a batch meet at midnight regarding the placement week. Spent the next couple of hours discussing the placement scenario with quite a few people at aamchair. Before I could realise it was nearly 4 in the morning. Have an early morning start tomorrow, hope to wake up on time!

Day 305 - 5th September 2011

Had a full day of classes today courtesy the rural communication workshop which is a prelude to the rural communication project we are supposed to undertake in the upcoming term break. We were given an overview of the general social structure, dos and don'ts and what we specifically need to look out for while undertaking the project. Most of my day though was taken up by FIF1 work, with the national finals lined up next week, a lot of last minute work needs to be done! Didn't attend one of the post lunch sessions of the workshop since there was a lot of work to be done for which mails had to be sent and calls had to be made.

Lectures got done at 430 and for the next 3 hours had back to back MCSA meetings -

• Placecomm and the Executive Registrar
• Executive Registrar
• Placecomm and the Associate Director
• Associate Director
• Programme Office
• Deputy Registrar

Was totally exhausted by the end of it all. Came back to the room and continued with the FIF1 work, a lot of calls have to be made to all agencies to ensure that everything is moving on track. In the night met up with group members for the luxury branding (LB) assignment. For the first time am working on an assignment which has nothing to do with sports :P In fact I didnt even know what the brand that we are supposed to work on was! The only saving grace is that Zoya is in my group and luxury branding is a piece of cake for her :-) Got back to the room by midnight. Have another full day of classes tomorrow with the rural workshop, its been one helluva tiring day today, getting sleep should not be a problem!

Day 271 - 21st July 2011

Woke up at 1 today, which also happened to be the last of our rest days. Had the placecomm budget meeting with the management at 3 which went on for about an hour. Turned out to be a pretty fruitful meeting. In the evening had a batch meet with pgp-1 to explain the junior committee selection process to them and the reason behind taking their rankings for the committees they had applied to. The process for committee selections started in the night. Five committee interviews started in parallel today and tomorrow eight committee interviews will be running parallely. Post dinner was in the audi where most of the pgp-1 candidates had gathered from where they would be sent for their respective interviews. As our luck would have it, the internet stopped working everywhere on campus! Because of this all communication to committees was sent on handwritten paper. While in the audi also managed to squeeze in the pre read for tomorrow's Advanced Financial Management (AFM) course. This is one of the core courses this term and I only hope that is better than FA from last year. Was in the audi till around 5 in the morning by when most of the work for the day was done. Just hope that I am able to wake up on time for AFM tomorrow!

Day 261- 11th July 2011

Had our last day of markstrat today. After leading the pack for one period we slipped to second place by the middle of the day. During the day the MCSA also had a meeting with the dissertation committee regarding the schedule of submissions for our dissertations. That took about an hour or so. We have been making plans of going to Honey9 for dinner for the past couple of nights, tonight that finally materialised. Kore,Kalkar, Rana, Sir and yours truly went have our first shikari chicken of the season. With no girls present we thought the food to bill ratio would be low, however to our the bill amount was pretty much the same! Got back to campus at around 11 after which we had a batch meet with PGP1. Had a placecomm meet after that to discuss the selection process for the junior committees. Have a rest day tomorrow, hopefully can wake up post 1030!

Day 244 - 28th March 2011

Had another meeting with the director and placecomm today. Went on for an hour or so. Had to give the bike for servicing in the afternoon, its only March and summer has already set in. Going out in the afternoon turned out to be a huge mistake, got roasted in the heat. On the way back picked up cartons for the stuff that was going to be left back on campus. Slept for a couple of hours in the afternoon. Had the Culnite followed by the farewell party for PGP2 in the night. The highlight of the culnite was when 2 PGP2 PGP1 couples, popularly known as PGP1.5 performed danced to a medley of songs on stage. That got the crowd going :). The party was good fun, went on till 9 in the morning. Quite a few of the seniors got emotional, dont blame them for it, they will definitely miss this place.

Day 243 - 27th March 2011

First day of the 4 days of 'vellapanti' on campus. The new MCSA took the outgoing MCSA out for lunch. Went to Kareems, it was really good fun. The conversation revolved around their experiences throughout the year and what we need to look forward to in the coming year. After that had a meeting with the director and Placecomm. That went on for another couple of hours. In the night, went out for dinner to Tryst - a lounge in a dry state :P. It was a friends birthday treat. Came back to campus by midnight. Too tired to do anything else, sleep should be easy to get tonight.

Day 230 - 14th March 2011

Had our first class on Distribution Management (DM) today. The course goes on for the whole of this week and we have 3 hours of classes every day on the subject. The prof. is excellent to say the least. He goes to the lowest possible level to explain every concept. He also makes us write helluva lot in class, which is actually good, it keeps a lot of people awake :P

Evening was spent working on assignments. Had a PlaceComm batch meet in the night. After that had to get back to assignment work. Have been in the library for the past couple of hours, will head back to the room now. After quite sometime have an early start tomorrow.

Day 218 - 28th February 2011

Another routine day of classes. The only interesting part of today though was the placecomm elections. Had a long night again thanks to that. Finally got done with it at 330 in the morning. MCSA work also kept me busy for most of the day.

Day 172 - 13th January 2011

Today's MDA class was completely based on a software called SPSS which we use for Market Research. The prof. explained it really well and we pretty much got the hang of it. Now an assignment awaits to be done which will be on live customer data. Had our first class on Sales and Distribution Management (SDM), which was mostly about sales force management. College had arranged a special Sankranti lunch, Gujarati menu with Puri and Undiyo taking the cake (pun intended). In the afternoon started reading a book on how brand Arsenal (the English football team) was built. I am not into football so it'll be interesting to see whether this book keeps me engrossed. Had a little PlaceComm volunteering work in the evening which went on till around 630. Geeko and I went out for a walk/jog/run after that (all 3 in descending order of duration of time).

Continued reading the book in the night, and before I could realise it I had dozed off which meant I missed the Lohri celebrations CulComm had organized. Woke up at around 330 in the morning courtesy a Palaash party that was going on next door, in fact there were multiple parties going on, the essence of each party could be judged by the type of music being played ;-) It's 5 in the morning now and I am not feeling too sleepy, tomorrow is a holiday but we need to work on th CB assignment which requires a 10 minute video and a 4000 word assignment. Will need to find ways to keep myself occupied till I fall asleep again!

Day 171 - 12th January 2011

Had 2 lectures of BM today which were about brand personality and how brands like Nike and Adidas have competed over the past couple of decades. Pretty interesting, how they took different approaches to reach where they are now. EB was again filled with real life examples, especially about Ahmedabad based textile companies. At one point of time there were about 110 companies but now only one big name has survived and one of the prime reasons for that is it never adopted any unethical practices. The last lecture was MDA which covered the theory aspects of linear regression, tomorrow we have a practical session on the same concept, it'll make more sense then.

In the afternoon was again caught up with some ARC work. That went on till around 5 in the evening, so now that makes it 2 days in a row where I have been deprived of my much valued siesta :P In the evening had to start working on the OD assignment, this is something that needs to be looked into, we have 4 assignments from last term to be subjected this week! Apart from OD there is CR, CB and QT. Anyways it pays to have the same project group for most of the assignments, so we've split up the assignments amongst ourselves, parallel processing ;-) In the night extebned family went out with Rajat and Samyuktha for dinner to Ikobo sizzlers. I was quite surprised that I was able to eat a complete sizzler, maybe skipping snacks in the evening was one of the reasons. Got back to campus by 1030 for a placecomm meet, we were given our duties for next week. Continued working on the OD assignment after that, have produced nearly 2000 words before passing on the baton to the next person :P Shall call it a day now.

Day 139 - 25th November 2010

Had a pretty interesting communications research today. It dealt with participatory theatre and people were asked to enact a play. The play had two protagonists and people could take chances in playing those roles. They had to just walk up and tap the person playing the role at that time and they could continue from that point. It was hilarious at times, with some of the people getting in new twists to the story. Apart from that a pretty routine day.

The course on Imagining India requires us to read Mother Pious Lady a book on the changing middle class in India. Brilliantly written it is a collection of articles on the everyday aspects of growing up in India in the pre and post liberalisation India. Started reading it today and its quite addictive! That kept me busy till dinner time, mess food was quite boring today so extended family decided to go to honey9 for dinner. Tandoori chicken and butter chicken are always welcome :-)

Had an ARC meeting at around midnight. Identified a few issues that need to be tackled and also got some inputs from PlaceComm on the industry perception of MICA. That got done by around 3. Have nothing much to do now, have another full day of lectures tomorrow and the weather makes it all the more difficult to wake up in the morning!

Day 73 - 7th September 2010

This is going to be a pretty short post. Have not been keeping too well, heading for a flu, as is the case with me it comes at the worst possible time. The workload just seems to keep increasing. Although today we did get a breather with the deadline for the ID submission being extended by a couple of days. Spent majority of the day at the, primarily to beat the heat. Ended up sleeping for a while as well. Tried to study accounts but just wasn't able to concentrate. Had a placecomm meet at 1 in the night, with the summer placement week approaching, things are going to pick up wrt placements. As for me, I need to decide whether I sit for the process or opt out of it and look for something off campus. After the meet tried studying at the library but couldn't get stay awake. Came back to my room at around 330 before calling it a day.

Day 71 - 5th September 2010

The eco. prof really knows how to make people study. After most of the batch stayed awake the whole of last night trying to complete the assignment, he didn't ask anybody to present it in front of the class. Instead he announced that there would be two surprise tests anytime this week! Thereby ensuring that we continue studying.

Something very strange has been happening over the past couple of days - no matter how much I sleep, I still end up feeling sleepy! I slept for 7 hours last night, which is a luxury out here, still I ended up feeling drowsy throughout class. Came back after lunch and slept for 2 more hours! That also didn't seem to help and continued to feel drowsy for the rest of the evening. Had plans to play tennis in the evening but laziness got the better of me and a I continued my journey in slumberland. All this has to happen at a time when sleep ought to be the last thing on a person's mind :D

Sankalp had planned the first set of performances of the year at the Open Air Theatre(OAT), this time it was from directors in PGP1. However there is something strange relationship between rain and our batch, during our freshers party it rained the entire night and it rained tonight as well, so the plays had to be performed in the audi. Nonetheless they were really good, there were 2 english plays, 1 hindi play and a mime. As repetitive as this may sound but our batch has some supremely talented people and it comes up at places where you least expect it! That got over by around 1 in the night and was followed by a batch meet with PlaceComm.

Once that was done our Markops group had to prepare a presentation on our company's performance and what were the key learnings. Our team has become famous not only in our batch but also amongst the seniors. Two major reasons, our (in)famous performance and more importantly the team name - Aila!Markops. That went on till about 3 after which I wasn't feeling sleepy at all. Went to Chota with Apu and Maushi before heading back to the room and calling it a day.

Day 69 - 3rd September 2010

The IMEI presentation went off pretty well today. The prof. was quite impressed with our work and our understanding of the topic. Whenever we are done with an assignment/presentation/submission there is a sense of relief, the kind that you generally feel after the last exam in school or college. Today was one such day as well. After the presentation a few of us went to Mirch Masala for lunch. Had heard a lot about the place, turned out to be pretty decent, one of the few places in Ahmedabad that actually serves non-veg food. Had a really heavy lunch which needed to be given due respect (read as siesta).

Wrote a movie review in the evening and did some general tp as well. Watched some cricket videos on youtube after a really long time, found this one - Sachin walking in to bat at the Wankhede, something that will always give me goosebumps :-) PlaceComm had called for another batch meet in the night, same agenda as last night where seniors share their summer internship experiences. That got done by around 1 after which I headed to the library to work on the MICAMINDS project, the deadline has been extended till tomorrow midnight. That took a couple of hours to do. Need to give some finishing touches tomorrow. Will head back to Palaash now, have two lectures in the audi tomorrow, hope I dont doze off there ;-)

Day 68 - 2nd September 2010

Rest day = wake up after 12 pm no matter how much work is pending. That was the case today as well, woke up at 1245 when I had to work on the IMEI presentation which is due tomorrow, the MICAMINDS project and start studying for the end terms!! That was also listed in terms of priority :-P Our group had to give a detailed analysis of Mint, the financial daily of HT media in association with WSJ. Got to learn a lot about the paper through the entire process. Also did a bit of work on the MICAMINDS project, which is more research oriented. I don't know whether it can be generalised or not but a lot can be learned from these kind of projects as compared to theory taught in the classroom. Also donated blood today, there was a blood donation camp organized on campus by Red Cross.

Today also happened to be Janmashtmi, so CulComm had organised MICA Matki Phod Competition (MMPC). There were teams were all of the hostels and even the people who work in the mess, who eventually won. It was amazing fun watching the whole thing, facebook is now flooded with photos and videos from the event :-) PlaceComm had called for a batch meet at midnight, seniors who interned at various companies shared their experiences with us. Got back to working on the IMEI presentation with our group after that, which went on till 430 in the morning, hope it goes off well tomorrow!

Day 52 - 17th August 2010

Had a late start to the day today with lectures beginning at 10, I stretched it by waking up at 11! Made for the second lecture which was on social sciences and communication. But that was just the beginning of my day. After lunch we had a FA tutorial arranged for us since most of then non commerce guys are pretty lost in that subject! This was followed by a talk on the event management industry by the CEO of Percept. He is one of the most inspiring people I have met till date. Becoming a CEO of a 400 crore company at the age of 35 is no small feat! He spoke at length about sports marketing, wedding planning, movies, brand content, events and many more things. The best part about this interaction was the fact that he told us about the mistakes he has committed and how we should learn from it and avoid it, this is something that not many speakers are comfortable with. He may have come across as arrogant to some people, but I feel he has earned it. I thoroughly enjoyed it and hope he comes to campus again.

In the evening went to see Peepli Live at PVR. Its a pretty decent movie, worth watching once, although the whole part about the media hyping up trivial stories is slightly exaggerated. Got back to campus in time for the mock GD's arranged by PlaceComm for the summers. I was advised to work on the tone of my voice because it was felt that I came across as too authoritative. Another thing the seniors pointed out was that the GD was too cordial and it definitely is not going to be like that during the actual GD.

We have been given a break tomorrow to prepare for our marketing group assignment, which is to come up with a marketing plan for a new product. But as is always the case, whether we get a one day break or a one week break we always work on the just in time principle ;-)

Day 42 - 7th August 2010

The last day of the week always has everyone in high spirits. Had only 3 lectures today, thanks to that got done by 1230. Saw the last part of the India SL test match at the community centre. What made it special apart from India winning the match was that it was a fourth innings chase. Its good fun to watch a match in a group like we did today, hope there are many more matches like this.

The weather has just been deteriorating out here. Whenever there is some free time the rain Gods decide to pay a visit. Thanks to that all plans of playing tennis were washed out. Had a PlaceComm meet in the evening. Some basics about our CV and what to prepare for interviews. After the PlaceComm meet , MCSA met the batch to take some general feedback about issues faced by us. One thing I've noticed about feedback sessions, not just over here but in general, people use it as a platform only to give negative feedback, at times positive feedback can also be given :-)

Sankalp, the theatre group at MICA, kicked off the 2010 season with 3 plays at the audi. My pick of the plays was the one on multiple personality disorder, it was a brilliant concept and had an ending very people could have anticipated. That got done by around midnight, had to come back to my room and prepare a writeup about the opening night for TI. Had plans to go to Chota but the rain ensured that I was confined to the Palaash veranda. Hope the rains dont ruin tomorrow's holiday.

Day 32 - 28th July 2010

Another loong day! Had MLE and PM in the morning, nowadays people have become very strict about being on time for lectures, so the class being half empty for the first lecture has become a very common occurrence. MLE was a little interesting (surprisingly) , the session focused on IP laws and regulations. Saw various examples of cases that could classify for IP violations.

The afternoon session was on CT. Learnt about how the media has been used a vehicle for propaganda through the ages. This is something that started off in the US and now is taking roots in India as well. Over the past couple of days I've realised that its not very easy to stay awake in class, especially the ones which are in the audi. Falling asleep for a minute or two seems to happen quite often. The only saving grace is the fact that Im not alone ;-) Also had our first MICA Lecture Series (MLS) session today. The VP of TNS came to campus to talk to us about Brand Management and Market Research. A person with industry experience can give a really refreshing perspective of things, liked some of the points that came out of his presentation, especially the part regarding the irreverence associated with a brand like Virgin and how it can be used to the company's advantage.

Got done with MLS at 630, so really didn't feel like doing anything in the evening. Read a few articles on cricinfo after a really long time. God scored his 48th test century today :-) , found a nice article on the site. After dinner decided to work on the creative strategy group assignment, that took more time than expected. Also had a PlaceComm meet at midnight, just a general meeting regarding our CVs. Had to finish the remaining part of the assignment after the meet. Got back to my room at 2 and started typing this post. Another long day beckons tomorrow(or should I say today?). Time for some shut eye.