Seven Secrets of Survival....

“The real work starts AFTER you crack CAT… “ the words of my NITT senior came rushing back to me as I saw the academic schedule for the 15-day prep course… these people are mad! Classes on Sunday afternoons, quizzes starting at 10pm, all night workshops from 10pm to 4am, where the prof takes out all his bottled up anger at his wife on the clueless backbencher!!! After a long period of hibernation that I call final year engineering, such a hectic schedule can take its toll on any unprepared MBA student…. Especially in trichy, der are only temples and factories!!! And the movie halls are filled with rajinikanth… so leave alone acads, there is pretty much nothing for u to do for an entire year….

After an especially depressing strategy quiz full of accounting and taxes, we settled down to take out our vengeance on the unsuspecting birthday boy’s ass… “rishi tho fundoo hai… he doesn’t study anything, but still cracks the quizzes….” Ladies and gentlemen, that was the five shots of vodka in jack's belly talking…he was born jai kishen in a village in orissa.. but 4 years of living with arjun singhanias and roy mathews made him rechristen himself to jackson…. it’s a different matter that I stand 71^st in a class of less than a hundred and this chap is marginally behind the topper… but I’ll let that pass for now…. Anyway, the comment got me thinking…. And I decided to take up on myself, the noble task of leaving my wisdom to generations of first year MBAs to follow….

Follow these thumb rules and u’ll be fine…

Make use of statistical tools… Empirical evidence has shown that the probability of a deadline extension is inversely proportional to the percentage of job completion by NTM (he is our class rep)….As a corollary, you can find a high correlation between number of submissions and NTM’s working hours…. Nowadays, has NTM started working is a bigger concern than when is the deadline or what is the deliverable…

Low self esteem… This is for people who think Fred Luthans is the guy who made tom & jerry and that Brealey Myers is the refined version of Duckworth Lewis… Do not hesitate to acknowledge ur friend’s wisdom… I’ve learned that talking to front benchers can get u much much more marks than reading those books…. U never know, they might even take pity on yer plight and be considerate enough to share some “probable questions” with you…. A result of their innumerable after-class doubt clearing sessions.

The theory of last impressions… everyone has a max of 5 bunks… do them at the beginning of the course… advantages? U wont have to bunk classes to give final touches to a grp assignment… “arre yaar, I’ve already bunked 5… u haven’t bunked any na? so why don’t u take the printout and submit?” another advantage is… u get to conserve all yer energy for most of the term… do some serious CP in the last 3-4 classes, and when the prof grades u, he’ll remember… but all those idiots who spoke in the first few classes would have left his consideration set looong looooong back…

Sheep mentality…. Your bschool profs will always encourage you to be leaders and not just followers…. Take that advice at your own peril… because the guy who submits assignments first is always despised by his friends…. And the prof is jobless for like another 2-3 days, so he goes thru ur assignment with a microscope…. I learnt all this the hard way in my first term… the only value add I got from the accounting course… If 95 people are doing fin-mar, u also do fin-mar… if junta is applying to all the companies for placements, u also do that… if u hold ur ego up high, yer not gonna get any of those shortlists….

Attend those wetnights… Membership to a zillion campus committees get fixed up at suttah-joints and wetnights…. Seniors cant be expected to remember the names of each and every junior…. Especially guy juniors… so if u wanna get selected, u may as well have a coupla drinks with them… committee memberships are a ticket to networking with the seniors and through them, a string of super seniors…

Flexibility… MBAs are not supposed to have firm opinions on anything.. keep ur options till the end… whether it is on electives, or rooms, or even CP…

Prof: “So… should this company have a high D/E or a low D/E?”
Dumbo # 1: “High… blah blah blah”
Dumbo # 2: “Low… blah blah blah”
Smarty: “It depends sir… without more data on the macroeconomic blah blah”

Branding… this provides your bread and butter through 2 yrs @ bschool…. Doesn’t matter if yer a back bencher whose highest grade ever is a modest B…. doesn’t matter if u graduated out of a god forsaken engg college no one has ever heard of…. Doesn’t matter if your so called workex is nothing more significant than tapping fingers at yer comp’s keyboard just like a million other people in bangalore’s software companies… if u can manage yer brand and act suave, u will still be called to give out pearls of wisdom at gyaan sessions and online forums…

I could have gone on… but adding an eighth funda would spoil the title of the blog…. :-D