Tag Archives: student life at ISB

Gameworld Trilogy: Check, Exams and Reports Due: Check

Ok, so I finally finished reading Samit Basu’s Gameworld trilogy. A worthy ending to the trilogy with almost same or better levels of humor and a good plot to back everything up as well. I needn’t have worried that the follow ups may not be as good as the first one. All 3 are decent books, with liberal doses of humor and references to Western movies as well. The third one had equally crazy reference to LOTR/ even one to braveheart.

The third and last book took me some time since the last few days have been pretty busy. Not that its any less busy at present, but now that I have finally managed to get time to finish it off, I can rest easy. Till I pick up the next book of course.
Meanwhile, life @ ISB goes on as it always does. Lots of reports to finish this week, and exams the next! Its just my luck that the 4 subjects I took up this term all have reports due AND exams, unlike other subjects which have no end-term exams, with grading consisting of individual/group assignments as well as in-class quizzes and group projects. Ah well, to work!
PS: Next Up: The long pending ‘Brisingr’ by Christopher Paolini. I need to finish it. Only regret in advance: he should have finished the Inheritance “Trilogy” (Now they call it a ‘Cycle’!) as planned rather than extending it to a fourth and last book (fingers crossed).

Marketing Events to Students @ ISB

In the 1 year program at ISB, the one thing that is at a premium is time. With different activities taking place every week, many of the clubs often come up with some great ideas to increase student interest and awareness in different topics.
A while back, the Real Estate and Infrastructure Club at ISB organized the ‘Infrastructure Summit 2009’. The theme of the event was “Realizing Indian Infrastructure 2015”. The event also included a panel discussion on ‘Public Private Partnerships: A Reality or a Distant Dream?
Anyway, the point of this blog post is to showcase the great marketing done by the club members to promote the summit within the student community. They used a mix of emails as well as posters at various spots inside the college.
What I found extremely interesting was the design of the posters to show the possibilities and the growth potential of the Infrastructure Industry in India in the coming years which in folded into the theme of the summit.
Some of the extremely creative ads used are shown below:

Click on each pic to expand and read the actual captions

Credit for the campaign: Hardik Jhaveri and Shouvik Sarkar.

Halloween Party and a Lazy Weekend

After a long long time, I finally had a weekend when I didn’t have any immediate assignments due. This of course does not mean I wasn’t busy. I was still running around the whole weekend from meeting to meeting for a couple of projects whose reports we have to submit. However, since those aren’t due for at least another 10 days, the weekend was relatively chill when compared to batchmates who had assignments due over the weekend.

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 in 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…..

Jargon in ISB

First of all, a disclaimer:

While I never shy away from pulling someones leg, this is a generic post NOT intended to pull the leg of anyone in particular, just some stuff I have noticed in ‘general’ during classes in the last 2 weeks 😀 So if you take offense, its more a case of a guilty conscience than any particular effort from my side 😉

With so many smart people around, there are a lot of people who either assume that everyone is as smart as them, or, want to show how smart they are . Hence we have jargon filled sentences being fired at the profs during different classes, with people clamoring to show off their management knowledge / knowledge of that particular subject. Of course, I may be wrong and perhaps thats just how you talk after a couple of years as a manager/consultant, in which case I will apologize once I see it for myself, in a few years hopefully….

I dont even remember the jargon that gets used in class sometimes, its that heavy and difficult to follow. With contribution from some people in my section, in no particular order, heres a compilation of some jargon common among ISB students:

  • It depends: This has been the favorite of everyone on campus, especially when you are asked a question by the professor and want to do a classic walk right on the fence to get CP points no matter which of the two options is correct.
  • Paradigm Shift: Another favorite of people looking for fancy words. A paradigm shift can be applied to anything and by anyone, thus confusing the whole class sometimes, what to talk of the prof.
  • Thought Leader: Ah yes,we are all expected to be thought leaders soon, but no one has a clear idea of what kind of thoughts a thought leader is supposed to have though.
  • 20,000 feet overview: or was that 30,000 feet? Not that it matters much. A favorite of people during club presentations, when they haven’t done something, but still want to show what they know, thus giving everyone a veryveryvery high level overview which is of no use to anyone.
  • Reinvent the wheel: Another chestnut, can be applied anywhere and everywhere when someone wants to show how hes understood the concept and wants to state it in his own words hoping for some more CP.
  • Dude: Universal term here. I use it as often as anyone. Can refer to anyone from a 24 yr old to a 45 year old, especially since more often than not, you dont know the name of the other person who you may just have met. The context and usage differ of course.
  • Network: And of course, the grand daddy of them all, responsible for ‘dude’ above. The word many of us are sick and tired of, but which just wont go away. Something that we are all supposed to do as much as possible over the next one year.
  • Gyan: Refers to all the top secret info imparted by alums before they left us to the mercy of the ISB campus for this year. Also may refer to information imparted by people during club sessions. Maybe good or bad, either way.
  • Arbit: Universal term actually, referring to ‘arbitrary’, used a lot in context of ACP.
  • ACP: The ghost of class participation which is destined to haunt some of our subjects this year.
  • LRC: An incomprehensible term when mentioned to friends and family not in ISB. Refers to the college library or ‘learning resource center’ (Did I get that right?). The place which all the studious students hit till 2AM everyday.
  • Quadee: Similar to roomie/room-mate. Refers to 4 people/quadies living in the shared apartments or ‘quads’, as they are referred.
  • Comparative Advantage: Another hot term which is just spreading like wildfire in campus after recent economics lectures. Any economics term/question/reason that you dont understand may have this as the answer, at least that seems to be the current perception anyway 😀

Thats pretty much what I have managed to gather. Feel free to add more terms in the comments below.

(NOTE: This is NOT the specific jargon some people use. Thats even more incomprehensible to me and too full of 3 and 4 letter abbreviations to remember)