Writing examinations after you have worked for a good 3 years (that too in the IT industry that is notorious for converting energetic college graduates into lazy, code-stealing couch potatoes) can be quite a task. I discovered it over the past 5 days, as I tried to negotiate my way through a barrage of 1 - hr MBA papers.
One good thing about the MBA course is that there are only 2 or 3 papers that are not related at all to the current affairs. One of the very few good habits I had developed post my graduation was to stay abreast with the current affairs, be it via reading newspapers (Infosys bench time has a lot to contribute towards this) or by following the debates on NDTV or Times Now. So, I have pretty much become a jack of all trades when it comes to current affairs. Secondly, having worked for a considerable duration in a highly organized private company gives you a fair idea about the way management issues are handled. To sum up, out of the 8 first sem papers, there were 3 papers I had no idea about, prior to joining the course and my aim was to concentrate on those. To add to these, I have become a surprisingly attentive student here, taking giant strides from my last or second last row seeking school/college days to settle in in the second row regularly here, which virtually leaves me with no option but to concentrate, not a bad thing to happen!
The 8 - ppr, 5 - day long ordeal unfolded on Monday, with the Management Concepts and Applications paper the first in line. As the name suggests one could ramble on and on about what are the tasks of a manager, how he handles stuff and get away with it, which is exactly what I did. The normal exam time table had scheduled 2 papers for us each on Tuesday , Wednesday and Thursday, one from 10 am and the other from 2 pm. Given that we're less than two months into the course, the syllabus was pretty manageable and my strategy was to study for the second paper in the 3 hour gap. Tuesday and Wednesday passed off fairly well with this strategy.
Come 11:15 am on Thursday, when I was sitting in a friend's room (after having fared fairly well in the accounts paper which ended at 11 am), planning to study 150 odd slides with him for the next paper which was completely theory based and the kind of lecturer we had for that paper blitzed through them @ 5 slides per minute, which made it impossible for even an attentive mortal like me to grasp anything. As I was getting comfortable, he broke the silence of the room, saying, "Let's make it fast, we've hardly got 10 minutes".
Have you freaking lost it? - was what I screamed mentally.
"What do you plan to do for the rest of the 165 minutes after that?" - is what I actually asked him.
His reply would have made any decent student freeze, but not me, thanks to the highs and lows (mostly lows) of my Electrical Engineering course, where I had even gone to write paper A thinking that paper B was scheduled then!
His next words were, "Today's time table says that there will be just half an hour's break between the papers, in case you haven't noticed... and we've already spent 20 minutes of that".
From my end, THAT WAS IT!!! I didn't even bother looking at the uncountable slides that contained answers to the questions I was about to encounter in the next hour. How the paper went would be a moot question now. However, there came a point in the examination when I could hear people discussing answers and I could not even relate them to the questions!
One good thing about the MBA course is that there are only 2 or 3 papers that are not related at all to the current affairs. One of the very few good habits I had developed post my graduation was to stay abreast with the current affairs, be it via reading newspapers (Infosys bench time has a lot to contribute towards this) or by following the debates on NDTV or Times Now. So, I have pretty much become a jack of all trades when it comes to current affairs. Secondly, having worked for a considerable duration in a highly organized private company gives you a fair idea about the way management issues are handled. To sum up, out of the 8 first sem papers, there were 3 papers I had no idea about, prior to joining the course and my aim was to concentrate on those. To add to these, I have become a surprisingly attentive student here, taking giant strides from my last or second last row seeking school/college days to settle in in the second row regularly here, which virtually leaves me with no option but to concentrate, not a bad thing to happen!
The 8 - ppr, 5 - day long ordeal unfolded on Monday, with the Management Concepts and Applications paper the first in line. As the name suggests one could ramble on and on about what are the tasks of a manager, how he handles stuff and get away with it, which is exactly what I did. The normal exam time table had scheduled 2 papers for us each on Tuesday , Wednesday and Thursday, one from 10 am and the other from 2 pm. Given that we're less than two months into the course, the syllabus was pretty manageable and my strategy was to study for the second paper in the 3 hour gap. Tuesday and Wednesday passed off fairly well with this strategy.
Come 11:15 am on Thursday, when I was sitting in a friend's room (after having fared fairly well in the accounts paper which ended at 11 am), planning to study 150 odd slides with him for the next paper which was completely theory based and the kind of lecturer we had for that paper blitzed through them @ 5 slides per minute, which made it impossible for even an attentive mortal like me to grasp anything. As I was getting comfortable, he broke the silence of the room, saying, "Let's make it fast, we've hardly got 10 minutes".
Have you freaking lost it? - was what I screamed mentally.
"What do you plan to do for the rest of the 165 minutes after that?" - is what I actually asked him.
His reply would have made any decent student freeze, but not me, thanks to the highs and lows (mostly lows) of my Electrical Engineering course, where I had even gone to write paper A thinking that paper B was scheduled then!
His next words were, "Today's time table says that there will be just half an hour's break between the papers, in case you haven't noticed... and we've already spent 20 minutes of that".
From my end, THAT WAS IT!!! I didn't even bother looking at the uncountable slides that contained answers to the questions I was about to encounter in the next hour. How the paper went would be a moot question now. However, there came a point in the examination when I could hear people discussing answers and I could not even relate them to the questions!
u did well in accounts..and flunked 1 sem in that...i just hate u for being good in subjects that i suck.By d way i remember one rather hilarious incident during my mba days.We also had internal exam of 1 hr(just like yours) and on the day of a particular exam i came prepared for a different subject than the one whose exam we were supposed to sit for..so i very calmly tranfered the slides of that subject from my lappy to my mobile and during the exam went through them swiftly while pretending to be doing calculation or watching time on my mobile(yes i cheated..what the hell..the whole indian education system is anyways rotten..its all about learning to be smart).
ReplyDeleteIt's happened to me once in an internal exam during engg days. We used to have 2 exams in a day and I prepared for paper 2, only to discover at exam hall entrance that paper 1 was scheduled then :/
ReplyDelete