Saturday, September 10, 2011

The Classroom

I know MBA in a certain way; it is what I have done every single day for the last ten months.

Today, as I wake up (or rather unable to sleep) to my last official In-the-Classroom day, I can't help but think of how the many firsts in Nitin Patwa's Basics of Excel class are going to be the lasts in Nirmal Gupta's Strategic Marketing class. I have a come a long way since the time I apprehensively put my namecard in front of me for the first time.



They say that in an MBA, the best learning takes place inside the four walls of a classroom. I couldn't agree more. Here's how the learning experience has been so far:

loading ourselves with assignments from every professor with every prof thinking his assignment to be the most important;
taking Very Important notes (read playing hangman and doodling); texting mindlessly during lectures;
abusing those oh-so-wonderful creations of Mark Zuckerberg and Larry Page & Sergey Brin in the best possible way;
drawing caricatures of peers sitting across the classroom;
laughing shamelessly at professors;
giving supposedly Nobel prize winning answers only to be snubbed by the ever supportive peers;
stealing winks across the room;
reading your presentation slides ten minutes before the lecture or better still, while giving the presentation;
Oh, giving those never ending ten minute quizzes!!;
trying your best to stay awake in class; failing to do so and hence sleeping in class;
making weird and funny looking namecards;
smuggling food inside the classroom;
pointing the camera to your friend who is happily dozing;
forgetting your laptop/phone charger in the hostel room and realizing with a sinking feeling that your one and only source of survival is no longer with you;
passing a piece of paper to make a chain poem;
sitting apprehensively next to unknown people and ending up making friends for life;
pretending to be immersed in the world's toughest math problem while chattering away to glory on the SPJCM sleeping club;
awwwwinngggggg;
chanting to RD hymns;
celebrating twins day,secret santa day;
playing the guitar and singing in class;
pulling down your neighbor's chair at the moment prof is staring in your direction;
playing music on youtube on the projector;
clicking pictures of people sleeping to make a How-to-Sleep-in-class portfolio;
recording videos during lectures and making funny faces into it;
DCPing!;
photoshop-ing yourself and the girls of your class during QT lectures;
engaging in important debates like Apple is best, Apple is best, Apple is best;
trying desperately to upload last minute submissions on the not-so-loyal blackboard;
FAFFing;
admitting to drinking coffee at Irish village;
watching live streaming cricket matches on the projector .......

I could go on but I have to get ready to attend my last peer learning experience .. =)


.. Today, MBA in The Classroom as I know it, ends

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4 comments:

  1. That's absolutely brilliant :) and I know this list could have been inexhaustive but very well captures things that have become part of our daily lives.. I bet everyone does something or the other from this list each day in the class even today. :)
    To add up I remember my goof ups in communication classes, our weird dress code, our first case discussion, tying up your shoelaces together. Agree.. The list is never-ending and no bloody prof thing can apply a conjoint method to rank them :)

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  2. Well written honestly.. But just like Rohit, I guess I am stil in the denial or ignorance phase.. We hav all come a long way in the past 10 months..

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