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 167 - 22nd December 2010

Today's CB paper was quite decent, not heavily oriented towards theory. Most of the questions were application based and fun to answer. After CB spent around an hour or so going through the IGD slides, really didnt expect anything good to come out of the paper. Testing theory for such a subject is completely irrelevant, should be more of a case based approach.

We got our schedule for the next term today. The batch had some issues regarding the time table with Prof. Mathew not teaching us any subject and some other concerns as well. The ARC had to meet up for that to discuss our course of action. We decided to call a batch meet to discuss some of these issues, was a pretty good response,hope something good comes out of it. After the batch meet, Mallu had packed Shikari Tangdi Kabab from Honey9 , so Mallu, Maushi,Kalkar and Kore shared the meal at Chota followed by some random discussions on how engineers are and how engineering jokes will never really be understood by anybody else :D In the midst of all this had to study AM and also work on the OB make up group assignment which I missed in class as I was attending the sports marketing lectures with pgp2(still dont regret it, SRT's brand manager v/s excellence in organizations - which one would you choose? :P). The mood in the batch is already pretty relaxed since we had studied for the AM test earlier and moreover it is the last paper :D

During the course of the day, spoke to a few senior ARC members, got some pretty interesting points of view. Will need to take it forward once we are back next term. For now the only thing on my mind is getting done with tomorrow's paper :P

Day 166 - 21st December 2010

The OB paper didnt have too many surprises since it was based on a case which we had read anyways. 4 questions 10 marks each. Though the prof. still asked us questions which expected us to know the exact theory from the textbook something which is definitely not required for a subject like OB, as long as someone knows what the right thing to do is how does it matter whether I know that my organization is pursuing competitive excellence or creative excellence :P Anyways more than the OB it was the CB preparation that everyone was dreading. Started studying CB in the afternoon itself, had nearly 500 slides to cover, relived the engineering days when certain 'irrelevant' topics were left in choice :D One of the chapters on personality had theories which were propounded by psychologists like Freud, Jung,Adler and Allport. Some pretty interesting stuff. But then after a point it reached saturation point what with cramming about motivation,personality,percerption,culture,learning and all that jazz! The frustration levels of the batch were quite evident on facebook and on micamail chat statuses. :D Maushi's status read - "The irony of forgetting everything you read about memory" The frustration levels in Palaash also were quite high, as is the case in such situations there was random screaming of expletives, whistle blowing, dancing et all. Today though it went one step ahead with the Coco of the subject- Bhandu being brought out of his room and an unsuccessful dunking attempt being made. By midnight my eyes started burning so decided to go to Chota for a chai, have been doing random tp since then, will just skim through CB once again before calling it a day. In all of this we seem to have forgotten that there is another paper tomorrow afternoon - IGD but then we have 2 hours between the papers so bahut time hai! ;-)

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!

Day 161 - 16th December 2010

Study leave today and it reminded me of my study leave days during engineering. Most of the day was spent in the room studying. Have SM and CR tomorrow, SM is a one hour MCQ paper with 20% weightage overall and by around 9 in the night someone had managed to get a slide deck from the publishers of the text book. Its amazing how resourceful and efficient people become during exams ;-) Also managed to finish the Imagining India assignment today, will go through it once again tomorrow or day after before submitting it. Also had to submit an AM assignment in which we had to play the role of an account planner and write a creative brief for Bru instant coffee.

The highlight of the day though had nothing to do with MICA. At around 1130 in the night got a call from an ex-colleague, there were some major issues at work which needed to be resolved soon. Yours truly managed to give remote support from here and the work got done :D Was surprised to see how much I still remembered! Sports marketing nahi to SAP hi sahi ;-) Had a birthday celebration in Palaash at midnight. Birthdays during the exams aren't the best thing that can happen to a person plus one of the birthday boys is a founding member of PJComm, the unofficial committee which takes the trouble of sending one PJ a day to the entire batch. So you can imagine the amount of frustration that was vented out. :D

Day 160 - 15th December 2010

Last day of lectures in term 2 today! Never realised how fast time flew. Had 2 RM and an AM lecture today. The AM prof. was all praises for our batch and asked us to keep up the level of enthusiasm as we entered the second year. After lectures got done extended family headed out to Mainland China for lunch, as always it was good fun :-) Ended up spending a good 3 hours just talking about random stuff like who would be ideal for which of the senior committees next year. Got back to campus by around 430 and slept for a while. Continued working on the Imagining India essay, crossed the 2000 word mark and stopped for the day. Wrote about the evolution of hindi movies and heroes, another 1000 more words to go.

Off late there has been a huge load assignments that has been given to us which we have to do in our term break. We got one more such assignment today and as expected people weren't too happy. Anyways the CR's will be talking to the prof. tomorrow and hopefully things will get sorted. After dinner our CB group met to decide how we would go about the assignment, we will be travelling to Sawantwadi in the term break and a do a study on the socio cultural region. Should be good fun! Started reading a bit of CB, that is one subject I am pretty apprehensive about this term its too theoretical and the syllabus is humongous! Read 2 chapters and feeling extremely sleepy, shall call it a day for now, have a long day ahead tomorrow as well.

Day 159 - 14th December 2010

For once things went according to plan and I managed to wake up a little early today to read up a bit on IMM. The quiz was pretty OK, some of the questions seemed to require only common sense while the others needed a good understanding of media terminologies and concepts. Apart from that RM and AM lectures. RM was taken by a visiting faculty member who also happens to be a MICA alumnus. He introduced the topic of research design and posed some pretty tough questions to the class :P. AM was about the Advertising Standards Council of India and its role, some pretty interesting cases were presented alongwith the ruling of the council.

Had to finish off some formalities regarding the Bangalore trip in the afternoon. Had a discussion with the prof. regarding the learnings from the meet and how things can be improved for future meets. Slept off for a couple of hours in the afternoon. Had to get cracking on the Imagining India essay, which I did in the evening, it can be no surprise that one third of my essay is based on how cricket can be seen as a metaphor for the changing aspirations of the middle class in India ;-) At Micare it was the turn of Maushi's team to takeover and they came up with the idea of serving pani puri. It turned out to be a huge success with their stock getting sold out in 20 minutes!

Its end term season as well and we have a quiz in tomorrow's AM class so decided to study a bit in the night. Have been going through the ppts, have one ppt left before calling it a day. For some strange reason the exams this time around dont seem to be as stressful as last term.