Day 87: 15th Sep, 2009

What pains more? Forgetting to write about the 3 marks you knew.. or bullshitting your way through the remaining 47? I knew one answer in the ITC paper today but was unable to recollect a couple of points, so I thought I would come back to it later. And eventually forgot about it :-S . Not really cribbing for the marks per se, but for the act. Ok, now a little more about the paper. I have previously grudged about the assessment pattern of the subject. On how silly it seems to evaluate an excel/access applications course on paper. But today we reached a new level. We had an 18 page supplement with the ITC paper and we were supposed to read those articles and answer questions :-S .

Day 86: 14th Sep, 2009

The issue of scalability is not just restricted to technology. It manifests in quite a profound manner in MANAC, typically during exams. I solve all those mini problems and have my concepts pretty clear (or so I delude myself). But in the exam, you get one big 10 marks problem and bamm! I think I can do better in that subject, then again, it may just be some hindsight bias :) Anyways, am not going to get the chance to prove that again... hopefully!

Memory is another weird thing in life. Met pachpan and Harlalka at the mess during dinner. Harlalka has 2 papers tomorrow, LAM and ITC ( MUAAAHAHAHAHHAHA @ sec D,E,F). And pachpan seemed to remember practically the entire LAM paper that we gave over a month back. I couldn't even remember the questions in today's paper :-p . hehehe. (@pachpan and Harlalka... you got your mention :-p).

Anyways, ITC tomorrow. That silly concept of a computer technology subject on paper comes again. Standing in the class is not too great. Will tomorrow bridge the gap or widen it? Wish there were some technology to answer that ... or wait... good there isn't :-p

Day 84: 12th Sep, 2009

FOURTH consecutive day (err.. night?) when I am sleeping AFTER sunrise! Today I tied a handkerchief around my eyes so that I feel it is still dark :D **lol** :D . The devil this time was the CV.

BTW, I fell victim to the risk assessment theory I put forth just yesterday. Had the ITC presentation at 10.00 and realised my mobile was ringing at 10.05 . Rushed off for the presentation. Not much of an issue though since the time was given by us anyways for the preponement. Full timepass in the presentation as well. Some imaginary question not present in the case should have been solved it seems :-p . And of course, the tossing between solver and data table.. hehehe..!

Had the money kannon presentation today... which looks for all those bullets. That took up afternoon. Then the CV struggle started. The bloody dispatch office was closed, adding to the complexity (and wasting Blue Dart money). But anyways, I think finally, I have more or less decent stuff here and there in the CV. Finally uploaded the CV at 05:58:00 for the 05:59:59 deadline. Afghanim ji .. iss CV ko freeze kiya jaaye..! .. But is this the sahi javaab?' .. Will know in course of time!

Day 83: 11th Sep, 2009

Reached my room at 8.30 in the morning and had the presentation at 10.00. The temptation to use this 1.5 hrs to squeeze in a small nap is the riskiest one, since you just don't wake up on time! I fortunately woke up at 9.45 and rushed to the class; only to find none of my other group members had come. Immediately started calling them. One smart guy had not slept, so he was safe. Two of them somehow woke up when I called them and rushed in a few min. One poor guy could not be reached and he dozed his way off and missed the presentation. Talk about a hard night's work wasted!

BIO presentations as usual continued with the madness of extra comments. Today saw a nice little goof-up by one of the groups. Even as the presentation was going on, suddenly the slides started coming without any content in them :D . Apparently they had opened some wrong file or something!

You might start wondering if we are all machines to just go on without sleep, but it is more about balancing sleep a little. You either make up on the lost sleep yourself or else it will catch up with you. I chose today afternoon to sleep. And guess what, slept from 3.45pm - 11pm - for a good 7 hours - in the day :D

Was woken up by an INDEX mate. Ran a little late to the INDEX room for the meet. Right after that, got a call from a classmate. He called to inform me that the ITC presentation had been preponed to tomorrow morning from tomorrow evening. Apparently the prof sent this mail at 11.45 in the night :-S. Back to the library to debug our excel sheet and then make the presentation. So here I am at 04.00 am, at the library again, this time for some other reason. Lucky me for having had my quota of sleep! Time to leave now(no rains today thankfully!) and get some sleep. Have sufficient buffer to get some sleep before the presentation :-p

PS: last day of lectures for term 1 done!

Day 77: 5th Sep, 2009

It's hel(L). It's hectic! I had this whole list of things to do when I started the day:

-Work on the CV proofs (for all you people who aspire to get in here, please make sure you have proofs for ANYTHING that you are going to put down on your CV. Really strict about that)

-Modify the CV

-MANAC project. Read/analyse the balance sheet

-Start studying atleast one chapter in atleast one subject of the multiple quizzes lined up on Monday and Tuesday

But I was so tied up with other things that came up that I couldn't do even one of these things :(

Had this ITC project submission before 5 pm. A couple of team mates of mine had done a good amount of work on it. Thankfully. My job was to collate the final info, check for any errors, reformat some stuff, take prints and submit. That took up afternoon.

Simultaneously had a BIO meet. Was present there physically only :-$ . But saala ... in return they assigned me with the toughest part of the BIO project submission - some multivariate analysis on the data collected!

Today the junior core of INDEX had its first outing :) . Went to the city to check out this ground and make some observations and stuff. Then went to eat - the non veg junta went to Dastar Khwan and we, the veggies, went to this place Royal Cafe. Boy!.. was blown away with this Lucknow food thing. Finally I saw why it called the Nawabon ka Shaher. We started off only ordering masala papad and some veg seekh kabab as the starter and 1/2 soup. Simultaneously ordered this basket chaat. And when they came... mannnn... what quantity! The masala papad was papad in the form of a cone, with all the masala stuffed inside. The basket chaat was again super tasty. I was really glad to eat some good chaat outside Bombay! And the soup... their half itself was easily double the quantity of a normal full soup I have had anywhere else! Needless to say, our tummies were full there itself! :D Never got around having proper khana.

Day 76: 4th Sep, 2009

Slept off yesterday after all that tp. So, bunked the lectures today to study for the Eco test. As usual, studied a little; and majorly ended up reading a lot of xkcd (check it out! nice dry and sarcastic humor based comic strip) and Calvin and Hobbes. Wondered if I had read anything at all when I saw the quiz paper, but then, never mind.

Got our ITC marks. I have not done well as expected. But the marking gave a STRONG indication that the current pattern of assessment needs a MAJOR revamp. Guys who have been using a lot of excel and are pretty proficient with it haven't really scored as much as they should have.

Played some pool. Gave a practice apti test....... Got a little delayed there. Tried working a little bit on the ITC assignment. Where can I get there though? Might just do good by not interfering. Had a meet after that. ABS Vanki didn't show up his a-s-s. Guessing Friday night fever.

Thought of going back to the lib to work on the ITC project. Laughed at myself inside my head. Back at my room :D.

Day 69: 28th Aug, 2009

The luckiest people on campus are not the ones who have great grades, great committees and stuff.. but they are the ones who have their birthdays during vacations/internship period. This guy in my class, Singla, had his bday today. He got his share of bumps in class again, which apparently was the third round for him. Poor fellow was a little shaken after all the hits on his backside. Felt bad for him.

Had a special session on Excel from two guest lecturers. I personally felt the lecture was useful. More than exactly learning how something is to be done, it gave an idea of the possibilities that could be explored with knowledge of excel, especially in the context of a manager and analysis of data.

Had an Index meet later in the night. This blog will see many such entries in future. Should I try and restrict their mention to the more important ones? Lets see..

Worked a lot on the sec tee at night. Trying to incorporate all the names at the back. Seriously painstaking and time consuming job! I have ended up giving more time to it than to my CV now!

Day 68: 27th Aug, 2009

I don't think I have mentioned this.. We are alloted permanent seating places for the whole year. But in today's eco lecture, anyone was sitting absolutely anywhere. The vantage points (which remained hidden from the prof's view) were understandably in great demand owing to their higher sleep utility. I had opened my laptop to start studying for the ITC quiz that we had later in the day. Realised that I was even able to connect to the net :D . So studies aside and back to chatting/orkutting etc.

Finally bought a nail cutter. The first time I have ever bought one. Made me suddenly wonder how a nail cutter manufacturer even makes profits. I mean.. I don't remember anyone in my family or friend circle ever buy a nail cutter. It just exists!

Was talking yesterday to a friend about how the government is thinking of incorporating 12th marks as a criteria to get into the IITs. Today I read about the Cabinet approval for increasing the number of IITs and IIMs. As my friend said, these are the things that generate so much brand value for India. Although it is essential to have more institutions that foster academic excellence, no point in going for volume at the risk of deterioration in quality. Not an area where tradeoff should be exercised.

Had the ITC quiz today. Excel on paper :-S . The test actually required us to remember excel formulae :-S . Lost the point of the course here. The best thing about the digital format is the convenience to correct things on the fly as and when you go wrong. Quite the converse on paper.

Slept off nicely in the evening. (am making this post at 4.15 in the morning :-p). Went off for another CV review. Had to also complete a writeup for the Eco project. Thanks to Shantanu and Shipra for that!

My laptop bloody is suddenly showing 4-5 random lines on the screen! Noooooooo clue where it came from suddenly!! Wasn't there even in the morning!! :( ... Will wait and see if it auto-corrects by tomorrow or something (hope it does!).. else will need to call the service people..

Day 60: 19th Aug, 2009

At the start of the post midterm schedule, if there was one subject that I seriously thought would actually be a 'cakewalk', it was ITC. But just 2 weeks into the course, I am sternly reminded that any such notions of 'ease' at IIM L are bound to be disabused.

ITC is Information Technology Concepts. Primarily, it is a course on Microsoft Excel. (So much for encouragement of Open Source :) .. but that is a different matter altogether.) I always knew excel had a lot of features that an average user doesn't even know about. But still, after 4 years of engineering, I thought I could confidently assume myself to become comfortable with that. Now, class after class, week after week, am hearing all random functions in MS Excel, and it suddenly seems to be even tougher than writing code for a microprocessor! :-S

Finished my final individual presentation/review for Manfest! The most important part of it was when they asked me to take the project screen up. That is when I saw that my name had been improperly written with a random space in between. I just HATE it when my name is misspelt. My name was even misspelt on the name tags that we got; I had to make do with a duplicate cheap quality non-laminated one :-( . Anyways, corrected my name , took names of a couple of people I would want to work with, and one with whom I wouldn't want to work with ;-) . No hard feelings, just plain fair evaluation though. Still, I felt wicked when I met up with that person later on and made casual conversation :-p . Done with it anyways. On to INDEX now...

Have the first post midterm quiz tomorrow, on MANAC. It is funny when profs say the syllabus is 'whatever has been taught in the last 2 weeks' and only then you try to recollect 'what' has been taught in the last 2 weeks :D . Anyways, couldn't do much today (sleeping away). Started reading in the afternoon, slept off. Started again in the evening, felt drowsy. I thought it is 'cos of the room. So went to the lib. Opened the book there and slept off again. Realised (or rather accepted) the factors were internal rather than external :-p . Didn't put in too much of a fight. Will think about it tomorrow.

Goodnight. Sss..ZZzzzZ..oo long..