Class participation

There is this concept of class participation - meaning you have to speak in class and give a valid point in the context of the discussion of the case at that point of time to take the discussion ahead or to a better level. Now, that was the ideal definition. Practically, a lot of our grades depend on it. One can fail if he doesn't do enough CP(Class participation). There were these couple of instances today in the two classes and another instance in another class yesterday which hit me and made me think. The common point in all these 3 instances was the initial words "diversify the risk". After saying these sacred words, they explained their point further. This was their CP. Another instance today was when a guy in the class almost brought about an unrelated concept and said the words "they should differentiate their products and innovate". Based on all these sacrosanct CPs, I propose a basic framework for CPs: If the question is specific and about what a company should do, then say "Innovate and differentiate the products/services". If the topic is more general, then the consecrated words "Diversification" should work. If it something you have absolutely no idea about, then the absolute magic words of the genius should be used, which is "It depends".

Once bitten, still no shyness

In our "Human behavior in organisations" class, we were supposed to come up with values of each study group that we have. A girl from one of the groups came up and said something what our professor misheard and wrote it on the board as "coming good". The whole class was laughing and as she repeated herself, the prof again misheard her and wrote something more laughable on the board "come and go". Well, the actual words were "common good".

The striptease was good ;)

Today was our last financial accounting class (also glamorously called language of business) and we had financial statement analysis - how to decipher the strategies of the companies and also how healthy companies are from their income statement, balance sheet and cash flow statements. First we start by analysing some basic ratios and then we each of these ratios are further split into other components and more related ratios are analysed. If anything looks suspicious or if we want more information then we dig in more ratios that form the parent ratio. Prof:"It is like peeling an onion. You peel it layer by layer. It is like striptease. If you see only some ratios and leave the others, it is like seeing a half naked body. You wont get the full picture. You may see muscles on the upper half and be happy but you may be shocked to know that there are no muscles on the lower half." Financial statement analysis = Striptease !!! ************************************************************************************** Student:"Sir, the analysis"

then a pause.

Prof looking at him. Student: "Sir, when you do it vertically and horizontally....umm...Sir, I did it the analysis horizontally"

Then Prof is like "So, do you do it vertically, or horizontally?" Pregnant pause, a smile and a blink in his eyes "the analysis, that is"?

Written communication

Today, we had a class of management communication and the topic was written communication. Prof: "You people must have written letters. A lot of love letters. So put up your hands and tell us who over here has written love letters." A few hands go up. Prof to student1:"So, you have written a love letter?" Student1:"Yes, but I did not give it to the girl." Prof to class:"What is the main purpose of writing a love letter?" Student2:"Well, it was to express my feelings to her." Student3:"To Add on to Student 2's point" Backbench students:"Was it the same girl?" Student3:"It was not for expressing feelings but to convince her to accept my proposal." It has been such a long time since I have seen or even heard of love letters. Those were the days, when love letters were written in secrecy and passed on in between books and through common friends and secretly responded back. In today's world it is all about kissing and hugging on the yahoo or skype chat (something my roomie does very often) to express feelings.

Of kissing and covering backsides

Quoting my prof "If your customer is an a**ehole and he is your number one customer, then you kiss his a**e. Else, you dont get sales and you lose your job." Reminds me of the dialogue from the movie "Top Gun": Slider to Goose: "Whose butt did you kiss to get in here?" Goose: "The list is long but distinguished." After the class, I had a discussion with an accountant classmate who worked for one of the big 4 accounting firms. He told me that the first thing they were thought is "Cover your a**e."

Of essence and glances of women

I am sure the heading sounds kind of Mills and Boon titles.... :) Today, we had a public speaking class. The speakers have topics given to them a couple of days earlier to prepare for and they come and give the presentation. One of the speakers had this topic: "Are women the weaker sex?" The guy had each depicting some photograph and some one liners. One of them read "Women are the essence of life". But what came out from his mouth was "Women are the essence of my life". Hmmm..... Looks like he spoke some truth from the heart, huh? After the presentation, the other students are asked to give feedback about the presentation. One guy gave the following feedback/comment to a girl: "You had a three point eye contact. One on the left, one on the right and one in the center. You should give more glances. One atleast."

The chosen ones

Prof: Israeli's (jews) considered themselves as "the chosen ones of God". Just look at them. There they are in the desert with no oil, while all their neighbours have so much of it, then they are surrounded by all enemies and they consider themselves "the chosen ones of god"? I dont understand it.

Security guards

Today, in one of the classes we were talking about GCC(Gulf cooperation council) consisting of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, UAE and Oman. The prof describes Kuwait: These guys have a strange problem. They have a lot of money from the oil. But they are weak and have a lot of wealth and are surrounded by thugs. So what do you do if you are Kuwait? First, stash the money outside the country by buying assets abroad. Then to protect the money in the country, hire cheap security guards. So who are these cheap security guards? These are the US guys. They even pay you to protect you. When asked about what they give in return, the Kuwait guys reply "we buy a lot of their US made cars. But then it is dirt cheap and it is for the security guys. These is the least we could do for those security people." I bow to my prof for this wonderful insight.

Mr.President

The stuents had a short meeting with our college president the other day. he just wanted to meet us and ask us how things were going on. This is how he addresses the crowd after the hello. "I am very surprised all of you are still alive. We must be doing something wrong." :-|

Bandage

One of my classmates has come to the class with a big bandage on his forehead. The guy asks a doubt to the prof. Prof: what happened? why the bandage? Student: I fell down from the bunk Prof: you know that the bed is meant for one person only, uh?

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Even after 2 minutes, his neighbour is still laughing prof to the neighbour: you are still laughing. Are you the other guy involved?

***************************************************************************** Words of wisdom from our prof: "Here in the mba you cannot have both a love life and a study life. They are incompatible unless of course your love life is with one of your CAN group members." *****************************************************************************