Anyway, back to the original topic. Solstice this year was a gala affair, running over the complete weekend from 18th to 20th Dec, with over 500 alumni and their families in attendance from all over the place. We also had alums sharing quads with current students, getting nostalgic about their ISB days.

The student villages were all decked up for Solstice, with lighting and promotional posters (comprising of some really funny extracts from the batch yearbooks) all over the place.

Student Village 2

Student Village 3

Most of the alums arrived on campus on Friday, with registrations during the day. We also had mock interviews for the current batch by some volunteer alums as well as events for kids who were on campus. There was poker from the afternoon till evening, followed by a ‘Speed Networking’ designed to help the current students get to know the alums better.

This was followed by dinner and drinks with the alums along with a stand up comedy show, ‘Hamateur Night’ was the term, at the Class of ’09 Amphitheater, by Vir Das, the Indian equivalent of Russel Peters. The show was opened by ISBians trying out their hand at stand up comedy. For some videos of his work, try looking on Youtube. [WARNING: Search at your own risk. Some of the videos may be considered offensive by some people. We take no responsibility for your search results.]

Vir Das @ ISB

The comedy hour was followed up by a bollywood themed Christmas party at the Class of ’08 lounge. We had a DJ flown in from Mumbai and the party rocked, with a huge number of people on the dance floor! This was probably the biggest party on campus till date, and we may not be able to match it again, though I am keeping my fingers crossed over the last going away party of the year.

The Party

The Dance Floor was Full

The party went on till late in the morning, with people being ferried to a nearby hotel for an early breakfast to actually end the party! And yeah, 5AM is early by all standards!!

More about the second day festivities, and the a great music concert in the next post…

- Jasnoor, Class of 2010

The best part of the weekend was the Halloween party organised by the Student Life Council at the open air 08 Lounge. It was the largest party yet, with lots of alums turning up as well. People turned up in proper Halloween attire, with lots of thought having gone into the costumes. There was food, drinks, as well a rocking DJ…

The Open Air Dance Floor

Halloween Decorations

While the party literally went on till the break of dawn, we left at around 4:30 A.M., for a long drive on the smooth road to the Airport!! Its rare that you get time for such things at ISB, traveling with friends on a long road with nothing in particular to think about, just driving to nowhere for the heck of it.

I finally got to bed at around 6 A.M., and was up running to a meeting at 10:30 A.M. Some things never change…..

- Jasnoor, Class of 2010

 

Sadly, I was wrong. Very wrong, actually. This term is easily the toughest of all we have gone through till wrong. Agreed, the mad rush for CGPA & the dean’s list is somewhat less. But for a person like me, whose best academic performance was coming 4^th in Class 3, the above 2 indicators were never a factor anyways. I judge a term purely by its workload and in that Term 5 wins hands down. There is just too much to do. Period.

 

The entire term sort of peaked over this last weekend. Everybody in campus had, on an average, 4-5 assignment submission to be made on Monday/Tuesday. Everybody was running all over the campus, different subjects, different studygroups, always on the phone. Among all this, also cram in a soft skills workshop, a case study prep session with Deloitte, a talk from Google, CV review sessions and so on and on. Of course, there were the obligatory weekend booze sessions which further reduced available time – first, the time spent drinking (usually starting around 8-9 pm and going on till 2-3 at night) and second, the entire next morning spent sleeping or walking around like a zombie.

 

Well, one of the high points of the entire year (at least for me) took place last weekend. A bartending session was organized by Tulleho. So, we learnt to make 4 cocktails and the deal was that whatever one makes, one consumes. So we had about 40 very happy people at the end of 2 hours. Forgotten were assignments, deadlines, placements and other myriad worries. The mind was freshened, the body was charged. I only wish I had taken some pictures.

 

Coming back to the acads, one of the major pain points is that the old study groups no longer exist. For good or bad, some kind of synergy (apparently the 2^nd most abused work in MBA land *) existed in the study groups. Over 4 terms, we know who were good in what and work responsibilities were divided accordingly. With electives all that’s gone. So now I have 4 different study groups and every member of my study groups (19 in my case) have equal number of study groups themselves. The result is there is an astonishing amount of pull from all directions for everybody. It’s hard to fix up a meeting, there is constant juggling of the calendar and even when you meet ultimately, the phone just doesn’t stop ringing.

 

“Have you done this” / “have you done that” / “when are we going to meet” / “but you said you will meet at 10.30” / “it will take only 30 minutes, please come yaar” / “don’t give me BS about assignments, we all have assignments” / “Boss, can’t take this anymore, nobody is responding to meeting invites”…..different outcomes but the same common pain….just too many assignments!!

 

On a totally unrelated note, people tell me that Café has a new menu and it’s actually quite good.

p.s.

* in case anybody is wondering, the most abused word in a B-school is ‘intuitive’

 

Speaking of classes,some of the most hilarious moments have been in the classroom. Take for instance the time when a professor was trying to explain to us that it has been found that the death of the head of a company is correlated with share price. It is statistically proven that when the head of the company dies of unnatural reasons, the stock price rises. Somone wanted a clarification.

“Is is true each time the person dies or….?”

Well. THAT surely would need to be checked.

I remember saying “depends” whenever someone asked us something we did not know. That was the key takeaway from the Economics course. Does the stock price rise or fall? Depends. Should they try push strategy or pull strategy? Depends. That worked for a long long time. Until one professor actually asked, “On What?” and the student did not have the faintest clue.

I recollect doing arbit CP.
Professor: Why wont perfume and  wine business work with this business model?
Me: If you keep smelling the perfume, you wont know whats happening after a while. Same with wine. After a few glasses, you wouldnt know what you were drinking.
Professor: (After a moment of consideration) : For very different reasons though.
Needless to say, Section F hasnt forgotten. Nor let me forget.

Then there was the Strategy in IT course where a lot of us techies feel we need to establish that we know a lot about the industry. So, the other day we were discussing trends and there was the mention of a particular website. The smart alecks in the class claimed having used the site. Well, that was most interesting. Especially considering that the claims came from the guys who pretended to know all about the site. Until the professor pointed out that it is a site specifically for women: discussing issues like how to handle oneself when one is three months into pregnancy. Ahem!

That and lots more…coming up. Keep watching this space.

*grin*