Day 300 - 26th August 2011

Woke up at 11 in the morning, the AFM end term was 5 in the evening which gave me about 6 hours to go through the slides and whatever little notes I had made during the classes. It was an open book test, but one should also know where to look for an answer in the book! Practiced a few numericals with Sir and got a few doubts cleared from the commerce grads for whom this is a piece of cake.

The exam was pretty decent - a good mix of objectives, short answers and numericals. Again every paper in this field is compared with FA from term 1 which makes even a mediocre paper look like a very easy one. Post the paper,met up with a few juniors who wanted to know about internship opportunities in the sports marketing industry. Told them whatever I knew and shared my internship experience with them. Came back to the room and read a few articles on the net before heading to Chota for dinner (there was egg curry in the mess). Done have classes for the next 9 days but the FIF1 speed nights at MICA and IIM-A will keep me busy for the next couple of days at least. Started reading the book on sports marketing in India which I had bought sometime back before calling it a day.

Day 242 - 26th March 2011

Last day of exams in PGP1. Since it was a case based paper, it required a lot of writing to be done. Nonetheless got done with it within an hour and a half and was finally relieved off the exam burden. Did general tp since after that. Went out for a movie - Eagle (extremely boring) in the evening. Got back to campus at around 11. Have a couple of birthday parties lined up tonight, posting this one before I leave for them. Cant believe a year has passed by!

Day 241 - 25th March 2011

Todays SCM paper was pretty decent, no major surprises. Caught up with some sleep in the afternoon. Once people got to know that tomorrow's CSMM paper is a case study it was as if the vacation mode had already set in. Have been doing general tp for most of the day and without even realising it, it is 3 in the morning! Will call it a day now, tomorrow is the last exam for the first year!

Day 240 - 24th March 2011

The day that I had been looking forward to for a long long time. The IMC paper was only for one hour, left for the stadium the moment I was done with it. The buildup for this game was quite huge, after all India was taking on the defending champions in a knockout game. And what a game it turned out to be. Got to see Ponting's century, brilliant fielding and death overs bowling from us, Sachin, Gambhir and Yuvraj's half centuries, India chasing down a good total and the crowd going delirious with joy at the end of it all. Of all the games I have seen at the stadium so far this has by far been the best. On the way back, the streets were packed with people on both sides waiting to greet the team bus and catch a glimpse of their heroes. Truly memorable scenes!

Got back to campus by around 1230 and skimmed through SCM for an hour or so. Couldnt stay awake but still couldn't get over the match that I had just witnessed. The ghosts of March 23rd 2003 have definitely been put to rest and it was also fitting that Ganguly was in the commentary box to see it :-)

Day 238 - 22nd March 2011

Was woken up earlier than normal today as one of my batchmates wasn't keeping well. She had been throwing up since last night. Got her some fruits and medicines before going for the exam. The paper was pretty straightforward, standard theory questions. Slept for a while in the afternoon before making a trip to the hospital, her condition still hadn't improved. At the hospital she was given IV and blood tests were also done. Luckily everything turned out to be normal, must have been a reaction to outside food. Got back to campus by around 730. Started studying for tomorrow's paper after that. We have SDM tomorrow with half an hour for sales management and one and a half hours for distribution management. DM is pretty interesting but really no clue as to what to study for sales. Went through a few slides but I dont know how much of it really will be retained.

Day 237 - 21st March 2011

Today's RM paper was as promised - all objective type questions. But it felt a little weird that a subject which had a textbook the size of 2 Britannica Encyclopedias could have such a paper. Come to the think of it if it had been a subjective paper, it would have been far more troublesome.

Caught up on some sleep in the afternoon. Came to the library after lunch to start studying ME. How this paper will turn out to be is one big question mark. The handout given to us is only around 40 pages and the rest of the reference material is actually presentations made by students in class!

How this paper will pan out only time will tell. For now though its time to get back to the room and catch up on some more sleep!

Day 236 - 20th March 2011

Had another study leave today on account of Holi. I am not too fond of the festival and found 5 other like minded people on campus. We sneaked out of campus in the morning to avoid the impending Holi celebrations and also wanted to study for tomorrow's RM paper. However MCSA duties ensured that I would start studying only at 10 in the night. Had to take classmate to the hospital. The entire process took more than 4 hours. And hospitals can also turn out to be very depressing places. Anyways have tried to go through how many ever slides I could for tomorrow's paper. Have reached saturation point now, need some sleep!

Day 235 - 19th March 2011

Today's paper wasn't as bad as expected. It was a good mix of objectives and subjective questions. As promised by the prof. he thoroughly tested our understanding of the concepts. Have a holiday tomorrow so most of the evening was spent doing general tp at the baddy court. At around that time a plan was made to go to Kareem's for dinner. What started off as a group of 4 became a group of 17 by the time we reached the place for dinner. Good food, good company and when the bill came we got a pleasant surprise - MICAns get a 10% discount :-) Got back to campus by around midnight, did some more tp at the baddy court! Came to the library after that to work a bit on the SCM assignment. Will go back to the room in sometime.

Day 234 - 18th March 2011

Had a study leave today courtesy the impending exams. They begin tomorrow with MDA being the first paper. Its a little intriguing that a subject which is so heavy on concepts on quants has only a 1 hour paper. That made a lot of people guess about the probable paper pattern. But knowing the prof. Im sure there is a major surprise in store. Spent most of the day preparing for the paper. A ppt was given for only one topic, for the remaining we had to scour through the notes and books.

The highlight of the day though was receiving the offer letter for my summer internship. I will be interning with Force India Formula 1 team this summer! :-) Had my interview 3 weeks back in Bombay. Got an unofficial confirmation last week and today finally received the offer letter. One more reason now for wanting the exams to get over soon!!

Day 168 - 23rd December 2010

AM paper was pretty OK. The instructions at the beginning of the paper would have put anyone at ease. Here's what they were -

1.Examples and Explanations should be like - "No confusion, Great Combination."

2. 30 sec/20sec/10 sec are ad timings,keep your answers also likewise - short and crisp!

3. Do not "write for charity" - focus only on your pen and paper :)

At the end of every page of the answer sheet there was a 'Thank you :)' - talk about driving home a point ;)

Paper was for only one and a half hours, so it got done pretty fast. The scenes after this paper weren't as ecstatic as the ones in the first term. Though we did do something symbolic in Palaash which cannot be shared on this blog ;-) I had an Interface meeting with the people who would be conducting the Micampaign city meets in Delhi,Chennai,Hyderabad and Pune. Post that extended family decided to go out for lunch. Now in 2 states, the book by Chetan Bhagat we had read about this place called Topaz where they go to eat Tandoori Chicken and roomali roti, so we decided to go there for lunch. On reaching the place we realised that the place is a 'pure veg.' restaurant :-(. Guess 2 states was more fictional than we had imagined! Anyways the food wasn't that bad either. From there we went to Cad-B for desserts. Had to rush back to campus since I had to pack and leave for the airport. Have a 15 day break but also have assignments to be done in the holidays and need to go to Sawantwadi for one of them. Anyways looking forward to catch up on some sleep and hog on homefood.

Here's wishing you a merry christmas and a happy new year! See you on the other side.

Day 165 - 20th December 2010

Today's QT paper was an absolute disaster. It was a 50 mark paper with 100% weightage :-S And to add to it there was a problem on simplex linear programming for 30 marks! Had practiced a decent number of sums yesterday and was relatively confident of solving the sum, but then while forming the equations there was one condition in the problem which I did not read and that changed the entire course of the solution. Could not solve the sum completely but attempted the theory questions, should hopefully get some marks there. Came out of the exam hall and realised the mistake I made and also realised that the paper wasn't good for majority of the batch. Micamail was flooded with people asking for a make up assignment since having a 100% weightage for such a paper is unfair. Anyways lets see what happens. Didn't study much of DC, in fact I slept off for a while, read a few of the slides half an hour before the exam. The DC paper was OK, pretty much on expected lines.

Had to submit the Imagining India essay as well today, managed to write 3045 words! :D In the evening we got a mail which had a case study for tomorrow's OB exam. Finally a real life case for the subject! It's a good thing that we dont have to mug up theory for such a subject, because it is of absolutely no use. Read the case in the night and kept watching videos on youtube of SRT's innings. Was a pretty light day in terms of preparing for the exam, but its going to be exactly the opposite tomorrow when we have to prepare for CB and IGD. It's going to be a mugfest!

Day 164 - 19th December 2010

Had a holiday today and boy did we need it! I cant imagine completing QT if we didn't have a holiday before the exam. Whoever coined the term simplex was a sadist :P Spent the entire day solving sums and trying to understand maximization, minimization, sensitivity analysis and degenerecy :P By the end of the day I am now feeling degenerated. Will study DC tomorrow after QT. This is a really short post, will crash soon, hope tomorrow's paper goes off well!

Day 163 - 18th December 2010

Today's CMA paper was pretty good, not that I did exceedingly well but the way the paper was set was very nice. No mugging up required, just an understanding of the concepts and how to apply them. 10 questions for 10 marks each in 90 minutes. In one of the questions we had to play the role of a marketing manager at Maruti and based on a recent press release from Toyota which would be launching a new hatchback and a sedan. These vehicles would be direct competition to the Swift and SX4, we were also given some numbers on the costs for these vehicles. Based on this data we had to suggest what strategy to the board to adopt to counter this assault from Toyota in the Indian market. The question read 'Many times in your career as is the case in life as well these subjective evaluations make or break careers.' The answer had to be written in the form of a speech and began with Gentlemen...... It was actually fun writing the paper and nobody left early!

Since tomorrow is a holiday there was a semi vacation mood on campus. Almost everyone went out in the evening/night. Extended family went to honey9 for dinner, we had heard a lot about the Shikari Tangdi Kabab out there and it lived up to its reputation. Moreover Mallu and I made the most of having dinner with people who have a very small appetite ;-) Got back to campus by around 11. Went through a few of the DC slides to see how much needed to be done. There was a birthday celebration in Parijat at midnight, feel sorry for the people who were born in the winters, imagine getting dunked in this weather! :D Will let the vacation mood to ensue for a little more time by crashing early tonight.

Day 162 - 17th December 2010

First day of exams in term 2. Had SM in the morning and CR in the afternoon. SM was a 1 hour 55 questions MCQ test with 0.5 negative marking! Anyways was a little liberal in marking answers since the test has a 20% weightage in the overall grade. As is the case in such papers people started walking out within 20 minutes :D Its like a race as to who will walk out first. Yours truly got done in half an hour. Had 3 hours before the CR exam, studied for an hour or so and then decided to take a break till the exam. Thankfully that helped since the exam was based on complete application of the theory, no vomiting of mugged up answers were required :P

Slept in the evening for a while before starting CMA. Now my experience with CMA's predecessor wasn't a very good one so Im hoping this doesn't go down the same road. Anyways started reading and solved a few numericals, which were pretty ok. Geeko came over to HQ to study and since she is familiar with most of this stuff was able to get quite a few of my doubts cleared from her.The exam is at 230 tomorrow afternoon so have a lot of time tomorrow morning as well. The subject is a good mix of theory and numericals and apparently the paper is going to have 10 questions worth 10 marks to be solved in one and a half hours! Will call it a day now and resume CMA tomorrow morning!