The Third Term

The third term is known to be a cousin brother of the first one in terms of academic load.

Operations Management is back, in the form of OM II, and is arguably the toughest subject of the first year. OM and MANAC were the toughest ones in the first term and if we thought that OM I was bad, then we had seen nothing. Coz OM II is known to be the nemesis of a lot many. However, two things went well with this subject. One, the subject was pretty interesting. With concepts like Queuing theory, Inventory Mgmt etc, backed by fundoo cases, the learning just kept getting richer. Second, our OM prof was one of the best I have ever seen in my life. IIMA has some great profs but this one is simply out of this world. Witty, Succinct and Imaginative, he would easily put himself in our shoes and hence was very easy to relate to. I am tempted to write so much more about the novel ways by which he teaches but this is not the right place. And ya, by the way, the final exam paper of OM II was such a bouncer that it does full justice to the “toughest subject” tag this subject has.

Finance II is the next in line. Am sure many of my batchmates would not agree with me and I respect that. But for people like me who are not too enthu about finance, this is the other toughie in the third term. The problem was that there was no set pattern. The cases were so weird and arbit. And the exams were as expected…..all bouncers J

Apart from the above two, there was WAC back in action. This time, we had 3 reports to be submitted, one individual, and the others in groups of two and four resp. And that meant that few of the Saturdays were doomed to be disastrous J

The highlight of this term, and also the reason why its known to be super hectic is the huge amount of group work. The study group really comes alive in the true sense in this term. Every subject has loads of assignments. Projects, class presentations and what not that need to be submitted as a group. Which meant that long hours were spent in one of our rooms, working on the next submission. I still remember the long nights that we would spend in my room, working on the lappy, brainstorming, discussing the latest movie, talking about girl friends and the list is endless. You see, no group meeting would be complete without our usual regular digressions !!

In between the academic load came few sporting activities, which further took a lot out of my time. “Yalgaar” is a fachcha-tuchcha sports meet that went for about 10 days and proved to be lots of fun. The event ended in a draw but generated good interest. Then there was the Inter-Dorm cricket tournament that is again a regular annual feature. It’s a knockout tourney that takes place on the basketball court late in the night under lights. It’s a very prestigious event with the reputation of each dorm at stake. And hence the passion this event generated was beyond imagination. Every match was followed by a detailed performance report that would be posted on our internal NB just minutes later, thus spreading the enthu to even all those who could not be there on court.

So all in all, the term indeed proved to be stressful to some extent, with so many activities taking place one after the other. And once the exams got over, the joy on everyone’s face was for all to see. The grueling first year, the toughest one year of our lives for most of us, was finally behind us. We could close our eyes, look back on those demanding days and smile with satisfaction. Yes, we had done it !! What lies ahead are the blissful days of being a tuchcha. That life, which we all have been envying for one year as a fachcha, now beckons us J And how eager each one of us is to come back to campus in a totally new avatar. We all deserve it and am so glad our time has finally come !

Everyone pushed off for their summer internship just a few days after the exams. I moved to Bombay. What happened during these two months is something I will not cover here. I will be back as a proud tuchcha now. And this blog will now see life at IIMA from a completely new perspective J

An year has passed by….time flies…hardships come and go…friendships grow stronger…a whole new world emerges……and I already feel richer without even earning a penny !