Exam Bloopers...

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!

Marching On...

On a fine evening of 3^rd May, 2012 (exactly 4 months ago), I was leaning back at my 1^st floor located office desk of building no. 4, Infosys Hyderabad STP Campus, where I shared space with 15000 more employees. My eyes were staring exactly opposite to the screen, at the pleasant emptiness created by the clear blue skies which appeared black through the dark glassed window.  For those who have known me in office, it was an uncommon sight on two counts. First, I was almost NEVER found at my desk in the 5 pm – 7 pm interval. Cricket ground, gymnasium and the New Food Court (NFC) used to be the top 3 bets if one of my friends had to place one on finding me in that period. Secondly, those who have worked with me would know that I have never been the person to stop and think like that on work related issues, no matter how critical the problem.

“So, leaving the company?” – came a voice that brought me back from the skies. It came from a senior colleague, whom I shared the floor with. E – separation was probably one of the most frequently used applications of the Infosys intranet in Q1, FY ’13 and I was adding to the usage. For the uninitiated, it is an online, automated application using which Infosys employees who want to part ways with the company initiate their notice period.

“Yes, time to go”. I uttered, punctuating it with one of my most genuinely fake smiles to give the impression of being very casual about it. However, it was not the case and I was still in two minds, which is why, despite having filled out the form, I hadn’t clicked on the “Initiate” button.

In order to avoid further conversation, I rotated my chair 180 degrees to face my workstation, trying my best to look busy.  It all sounds so very fancy, when you go out and announce to your colleagues that you are leaving the company but arriving at the decision is by no means easy. In my case, it was going to be all the more difficult, as I was not going to join a top notch MBA college, for which you don’t have to think twice. I had to choose between two courses, one of which was an MBA in Power Management from NPTI Faridabad, a college generally unheard of, however famous it might be in the Power Sector. Second, and more glamourous, choice would have been to opt for SP Jain’s executive MBA program (PGCIM), which offered a one year course, with six months to be spent in SPJAIN Mumbai and IESEG, France each.

My CAT 2010 score of 96.98 %ile had ignited hopes of a better score in myself as well as amongst my family members and friends, who were all the more surprised when I managed to underperform to on my way to scoring 89 %ile in CAT 2011. Though my options were limited, a decision had to be made, as I could not have continued in the company. The reasons were many but the most dominant one was that I was not enjoying it any more, all those hours spent in playing Cricket and Chess during office hours notwithstanding. I am a month into my course now and have already been quizzed about 50 times about “Why did you leave Infy?” – a question which probably requires another blog post.

Looking back at things has never been my nature and now that I am a month into the course, I do not dislike it. I have put in conscious efforts of maintaining a low profile and cutting down on the distractions and have been successful to a great extent. Infosys and Hyderabad days are being missed and they will always be. However, this has been a change that I genuinely sought for some time now. This gives me enough spare time in a day to pursue things that I always wanted to. The greatest incentive is that I have my weekends all to myself, in which I can go home and relax, play with my  18 month old nephew, spend time with my family and come back refreshed on Monday morning to take up the challenges of the next five days.