“What’s the difference between a B-school and a Prison?”

Ans: You are almost always allowed to come back to the prison if you happen to run away.

( Thoughts borrowed from future managers of India- my batch mates)

 Anyways, After spending nearly a week in a B-school, I am still alive, I am still able to differentiate humans & handguns, My sanity levels are at an all time high and I am enjoying the system. Discipline and strictness apart, life at any college is bound to be full of adventure & fun and I am already experiencing my piece of cake. And not to mention the real-time simulated situations for future managers to tackle, like say, the morning loo-fights with your roommate or worse getting stuck in the loo with no water in the pipe. These are real time simulations for the concept of maximum utilization of scarce resource. (6:30am-7:30am being the scarce resource time). I suppose the decisions taken will be crucial taking the time factor into account (i.e. classes start at 8:30). And then the class room discussions and debates. I have never seen so many people discussing and debating a solution with no clue as to what could be even remotely termed as a problem or issue. ( Me included in the list of debaters).  Ok, Jokes apart,  For somebody out there who wants a sneak peek at a typical B-school session, here it is.====>

 

Environment : 50-60 Highly intelligent (at least everybody thinks so) humans who can talk, walk and even eat in English. ( and when I mean English, it’s not UK English or US English but MBA English with frequent usage of words like “articulate”, “collate”, “contemplate” etc., and any logical sentence spoken in class must invariably contain one or more of the terms like accrue, inventory, ROI, break even, PLACEMENT etc …

Raw Material : Usually cases are discussed in class room sessions (Case Study). Most of the time the case is totally shred and torn apart and only the carcasses’ remain.

Learning Derived :  Improvement in speech quality, stamina to speak continuously for hours , MBA vocabulary and yes at times Analytical and out-of-the-box thinking.

( In fact I felt case studies are one of the most effective methods of pedagogy with good emphasis on real time situation and problem solving. Also students have to be so much involved in the discussion that it’s nearly impossible to sleep in the class L )

Conclusion:  Finally we all learn to agree to disagree and the class disperses only to continue the debates and discussion in the hostel as part of assignments, group work(see annexure) and homework. J

 

Annexure :

Group Assignments: This is the best part in any B-school curriculum. Basically the group assignments are a chance for you to sit together in a group and “chit chat” and still have the feeling that you are studying. Occasionally though we all come up with some unbelievably simple and ingenious solution for the given problems.