Quarter 3 - Week 2

Aah, the anticipation of being "impressed" by newly acquainted professors mixes with the stench of dread from the promised pressure in this quarter, to provide a very heady mixture that helps you daydream in class about what you would do if you were fighting a case where due to a marketing research goof up based on some operations research data it was claimed that managerial accounting had completely disfigured the revenues reported and hence disrupted the forecast.

The far fetched thoughts always ended up with me, being the judge, being given a bonus and thrown in jail. Before I could retrospect, I would be back in the classroom in a jolt because the prof would have noticed me dreaming and walk towards me. I might be being paranoid, but feeling guilty does that to you.

In Law, (yes, I dont remember the name of the course anymore, and I'm too lazy to find out. Read my previous post.) we began to study the concepts of Civil Law and Criminal Law. Apparently in the former, once you draw up a complaint, you could withdraw it if you want, but if it is a case of the latter type, once you open a case, there's NO way you can close it! This is because in a civil case, the court's objective is to clear the matter quickly as it's not really worth too much time, and they'll more often than not try to move in for compensation as a trophy of well-deserved justice, rather than go the length to fix the problem. A case in example - you buy a plot of size 30*40, and when you go there to build you see the neighbour has encroached by 10 feet. Enraged as you are, you demand justice and cry belligerently at the doors of the court, which lazily opens an eye and prefers to get you the compensation from the other guy, instead of asking him to break down HIS building and give you back your ten feet. In a criminal scenario however, once you complain, that same sleepy peace-loving behemoth charges into action (or it atleast tries to in the Indian scenario). You dont even have to pay lawyer fees, apparently the government takes up the "victim"'s case on its own head, and does what is required to get the truth out and prove the accused as guilty. That's where things have changed, see, now that the government has taken up your case, you've just been pushed out of the action to sit back and ride. That obviously means you're no longer in control, ergo when you say "Stop!" the case does not stop. It's simple physics really.

In Marketing, we learnt quite a few more fundas about how to arrive at a delicate balance of performance, process and people. We got to know how it's important that you believe in your idea with a passion that doesnt crumble, and if it does, it only does so due to hard facts and evidence. If you have a real good idea, instead of doing armchair research (you, your mind and your chair. No one else.) you should get your lazy butt out on the field to really see whether your hunch and observations about what the market really wants still stands. Then you get your people to believe in that vision, because only then will they really work as effectively as ever. And then he proceeded to give us a surprise test which as usual I wasnt prepared for. Next time, sigh.

The second class we had a guest lecture by Prof. Shombit Sengupta. And he gave us some insight into how you bring a brand into a person's mindset.... was good stuff. Our prof tried to request him to share some details on his current works, some of which was not confidential and which was insightful he shared... but for most of the part, he politely declined only giving us vague hints about what we might expect. Nice chap, one thing I really liked was how he keeps his mind occupied with various activities like painting, playing the piano, EVEN ARCHITECTING HIS OWN HOUSE! Apparently, that's how you keep your mind fresh and full of creative thought. Hmm..

QM2 - OR was a little slower than last week. Either our prof thinks we're really dumb or he thinks that these fundas are so important as a basis that it deserves the detailed focus and concentration he's giving towards it. I'm hoping it came across like that because I'm too smart for this stuff. It's not often I get to feel that, so when I'm learning what A,B,C is, I enjoy it even though this is nothing. The second class was excruciatingly slow. At this point I began to get scared that there was something REALLY important about this section, even though we appeared to be doing the same thing that we'd done in the first 15 minutes. Good thing I paid attention. I now know A, B, C. Thank God he realized we're going too slow, he says he'll buck up the pace next time. We've heard some horror stories about him from the last batch, that he's way too fast at teaching and thinks way too fast... but he's making a real good effort to get through to us, so I trust him. A little green around the edges, but a sincere effort is worthy enough to command the student's attention I think.

Managerial Accounting - Ahaah! I wasn't sleeping. Ergo, it's not the subject that's boring!! We spoke about what comes under a period cost, and a [some other] cost. We even looked at some of Infy's digits (publicly declared, mind it!) and took up "the challenge" of understanding three lines out of it. There were quite a few questions on what comes under what, how do you decide whether an expense should come under product cost, or general & administration costs or selling & distribution costs. What is direct material, labour, manufacturing overheads... yea, not too inspiring to talk about. A whole bunch of overheads actually. Saw so many OHs on the board, it kept making me think that there was a song in the back of my mind which had that in it. Anyway, classes over, weekend shuru!

P.S. Somebody said something about a surprise test next week, so we're back into that mood again! :)