Quarter 5 - Week 10

The thunderclouds that were on the horizon last week, finally hung right over us this week. Literally too. It rained/drizzled through the weekend, and you had this constant urge that "Yaar, let's just chill for an hour.. the weather's nice". But after one year of successfully holding all temptations at bay, I can successfully, proudly and miserably say that we sat still and did our assignments/ projects/ test preparations. This weekend saw a bunch of PGSEM students yawning more than normal, far more red eyes, and a huge queue at the printer in the Computer Lab. We can take a guess at how badly it affected the latter, as when I asked the support staff at the CompLab to help me with the Novell login (we need this to print out stuff), he just muttered "Aiyyo, these PGSEM students..". While the manager-in-progress in me was sufficiently infuriated, the engineer in me was subsequently humbled bigtime when the required action was completed in three very-easy-to-do already-explained-before-five-times steps. Took the printout for the last project of this quarter, and beat a hasty retreat vowing to understand the damn login system next time.

MSP - The first session dealt with software metrics, and why they were necessary. I thought it was nice that this came at the end of the course, because when you ask yourself each week "Why the hell am I studying this?", at the end there's a "Aah! So that's why I studied all of that..". It's a perfect way to make you look at the entire subject from a high overview, so you realize the importance of all of the learning you went through for the last ten weeks. The last session had a quiz based on what seemed like half the course content, probably meant to remind you that you should study for the exam, and so I very proudly look at my 10% score thinking "If I leave this prep for the last day I'm so definitely screwed." I think our profs like to remind us just how dumb and ill-prepared we are. Their own way of saying "Just because you got in here didn't make you super-awesome. Morons.". Anyway, the course ended on a very good note, not much complaints or suggestions on what to improve next quarter. This was one course that was handed to us on a silver platter, considering we have just been taught what we should do at work everyday. No marketing, leadership, finance fundas... just plain ol' project management, done right with stats and metrics.

LOC - Both the sessions were presentation sessions based on the book we were supposed to read - "The India Way". You should read it too! It makes you feel good about the way Indians work. The subliminal message of what we need to improve on requires more reflection, but even if you don't get it, you will atleast have understood what many of India's current leaders think and believe about us. Assuming that nobody had read the book, this week they had for certain assimilated the gist of the book. Every batch came forward, every batch explained their understanding of the India Way and every batch took longer than the time they were assigned. Oh, we Indians! (false laughter and disapproving smile/grimace), We will never understand the concept of time... Either it is our "baap ka maal", or we have very important stuff to share with the world since enlightenment just dawned on us, and only we hold the true key to life in the future. Yes, I was pissed here! We could have finished everything in one hour and gone home! But no, we sat, we listened, we yawned, and then we left.

Leaving the last week aside, I thought there was enough interesting material this quarter on what constitutes effective leadership, and how we can enable people to not just work but be empowered. Make leaders and followers out of everyone. That's what I took away.

PM - I would just do a copy-paste here. While we atleast had the mercy of the presentations in LOC being done in two distinct 1.5 hour sessions, this was a long drawn three hours! Dont get me wrong, I liked listening about what the different companies do with their products, but listening to product diffusion and the Kano models 10 times just makes you go "Why dont we have other models? The Kano model is just dripping out of my head now!" Luckily, there was a semblance of time control, as one of our classmates enthusiastically and loudly reminded each presenter that "YOU HAVE TWO MINUTES LEFT!" or my absolute favourite "TIME UP!!! (Pause for a second) TIME UP!!! (See if presenter is ignoring you) TIIIIMMMMMEEEE UUUPPPPPP!!!". Very effective. At the last one, the presenter finally gives an acknowledgement and wraps up in under 30 seconds! I wonder if people were just struggling to stay propped up in their chairs when the last presenter came on. I know I was. Finally, after that, the prof also came up and you could see the happiness on his face. He thanked us for our participation (apparently we were the most involved class thus far, woohoo! Awesome!! Yes, it dawns on me that he might be telling it to all his classes...) and then proceeded to give us a very short comment on how he wished a better future of us. And then... wrap!

I have never seen a class empty up that quickly at the end.

On to the final leg of the journey and into the storm! Exams next week!