The Magical Three Hours .
Its been fairly long time since I wrote the last one about life here at great lakes and this one too , I am writing this post in the middle of all the chaos going on here . These days , I am somehow keeping up with deluge of presentations , quizzes , exams and most important , sleep.
It seems to have happened in distant past but I would not be able to forgive myself if I don’t write about much talked about last class of Prof. Rakesh singh’s Macroeconomics class .
Throughout the semester , we all were struggling with the assignments he used to give us ( assignments ranged from Inflation in India to Singapore exchange rate management to US current account deficit to India on the move to name a few 
) . Most of us had the first taste of rigors of B-school once his classes started . Fondly known as ” Rocky ” among student community , Prof. Singh is an economist who would make you appreciate good things about india and at the same time , he would make you think hard about problems faced by India in general , and rural india specifically . Within span of 20 hours of his classes, students started talking in terms of GDPs ,WPIs , CRRs , Repo rates when they talked about nations .
I vividly remember one of his quotes , ” I still want you guys to remain confused and do the good job with assignments ” . First 17 class hours , most of us were clueless which direction classes were heading . But it was last 3 hour class where Prof speaks about ” India on the Move ” when it all made sense .
There usually is lot of hype about This last class, what with all the seniors telling you at length about it .
Prof easily exceed all my expectations and all the hype in those three hours . when I sat through those 3 hour class , I , rather none of us realized that its been 3 hours . Prof went on speaking for 3 hours , he did not take break to drink water or take a breath . Right from india`s economy in 1950s to Indira Gandhi`s tenure to liberalization to role of IMF in forcing india to open up the economy to Rural india growth to Enron to Anna Hazare to PC chidambaram to comparison of india and china , he simply went on and on .
And when the class ended , the entire 230 students stood up for standing ovation for Prof .
Rest of day was spent doing research about so many things he told in class ( There is a joke , that Prof. Singh speaks in hyperlinks . you could spend hours after each class analyzing various things he talked about , and you still wont be content ) .
Hats off to you sir ! Those three hours were the most precious hours of my life as a student . And today our Dean , Prof. Bala Balachandran sent the weekly mail stating that there will be many more such wonderful experiences over next 10 months !!
B school Grads : Looking for job in times of recession
I had to summarize an article from business week related to job hunt in the time of recession for MBA grads for placement committee. Thought I will post it here too , as it makes good read .
The article keeps MBA class of 2009 as target audience and draws examples from students class of 2002 as both classes entered the market at peak of recession . Article states that finding job , career switching becomes extremely difficult in such times . Students need to be patient and many cases, they need to put their ambitions on hold for few years before market starts looking up again .
Aaron McNally graduated from UC-Berkeley’s Haas School of Business in 2002 . McNally was looking for a tech job after spending his pre-B-school career in the TV industry . After MBA , he worked part time on campus to make ends meet for an year while hunting for job parallelly . Finally , he gave up on Tech job and he started with job in TV industry in 2003. He was running financial analysis on new projects for the company’s satellite properties. He continued there for 4 years and in early 2007, a position opened up at Google in its newly-formed TV advertising platform which was perfect match for his earlier ambitions .
The poor job market forced Aaron to be flexible about the kind of positions he was looking for. Ultimately, he reverted to his former career path, but in the end he arrived where he wanted to be .
Amy Brooks graduated from stanford in 2002 after leaving her job at Sun microsystems .Her initial plan was to use the MBA to break into the sports industry, but based on the job and internship outlook, she put the career switch on hold. She had interned with Bain & Co. and returned back to school with job offer from Bain . She wanted to find job in Sports industry by the end of college though .But when that didnt happen, she joined Bain as consultant and worked there for 4 years .When the sports job she had been longing for came around in the form of a marketing partnerships position at the National Basketball Assn., Brooks was ready, thanks to her experience at Bain.
It’s true that the position she accepted right out of B-school was not exactly on the path she was seeking, but it led her to a job she wanted. “If you can see a position as a stepping stone to where you eventually want to get to, take it,” she says.
Aparna Narang graduated from Kenan-Flagler School of Business in 2002 .Aparna was keen on finding a position in renewable energy which was a fledgling industry then .she got involved in the Sustainable Enterprise Program on campus, which gave her exposure to people working in the industry. A few of those individuals worked for Dupont and were able to help her secure a summer internship at the chemical company working on a “solar initiative.”By second year , job climate had worsened though . She continued her job hunt over next few months .She began talking with a contact who worked at General Electric whom she had met earlier in the year. Over the next six months, the talks with GE became serious until finally, in April, she was offered a position in the company’s renewable energy leadership program.
The article concludes with emphasizing on importance of networking in these times of recession . Few quotes of students which deserve special mention about networking are :
“You’ll have better success finding jobs through who you know than what you know,” Murphy says.
“The people I know who find jobs the fastest tend to be the ones who take advantage of the network and who aren’t afraid to ask people to take a look at their résumé.”
For the above members of the Class of 2002, the job search was much different than expected, but with focus, flexibility, patience, and a little luck, each was able to find the position they were looking for. It just took a them a little longer.
If there’s one thing the MBA Class of 2009 can take from the experiences of the 2002 grads, it’s that nothing’s forever. It definitely can get frustrating . It may not feel that way right now, but anyone that’s had access to a great education is in a good spot and things will work out eventually.
The article can be read at :
Life in Nutshell :)
Soldier : “Sir, we’re surrounded!”.
Army Officer : “Excellent. We can attack in any direction now !”.
Thats life in a nutshell right now .
With deluge of assignments , journals , pre reads , term end exams lined up this and next week , there is no space to breathe . chunk of efforts are directed towards assignments of economics . The more you read about factors contributing towards trade deficit of USA , the more perplexing it gets . Economics has been easily my favorite subject so far . It doesnt mean that I am the best at eco of all subjects ( relatively that is 
. I am equally bad at all the subjects ) , but I find it difficult to put the eco books down . To top all these assignments, Prof. Rakesh singh has asked us to go through a book related to macroeconomics ( non syllabus book that is ) over next few days and come up with the learnings out of it . Needless to say , this too needs to be done within next 2 weeks again .
This week , its going to be end term exams for Accounting , IIO . busy times ahead till 23rd june .
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