I, The Absolute

During our orientation, the last batch had made some presentations, of which one had shown the ‘enthusiasm curve’ representing the enthu levels of students during the entire course. The graph would have its peak only two times, Term I and Term VII. In between, the curve would slope down to touch nadir during Term IV and start pushing up thereafter to peak during placement time. Did not realize the graph could capture the moods and reality of all the students and of the all the batches so well. Indeed, with two terms behind, the enthusiasm levels at the campus are quite low with fatigue catching up with many a student. When I speak of enthusiasm, I refer to it with relation to studies. A few of them, however, continue to be rock solid and would not let go of books. These have IB or consulting jobs as targets and cannot afford to get lower grades or simply purely academically oriented. The rest are having fun. Entire weekend was more or less free with just one assignment. ISB had a class party. Come this Thursday, we have our Section ‘A’ party. Section ‘A ‘today had its photo sessions with the official release of its tee-shirt imprinted with logo “a” mimicking super-man logo. Imagine about 85 students wearing superman type t-shirts and paiting the campus with color blue. Some went as far as donning a underwear over their pantaloons, aka superman. Frolic.

A couple of updates – Exchange Program and Global Adventure Week.

ISB has an international student exchange tie-ups with 11 universities of which five are US b-schools. Kellogg, LBS, Darden, Thunderbird and Fuqua are some of the well known b-schools with which it has a tie up. ISB sends between 1 and 4 students to these b-schools. The duration is for three months and the tuition fee at these b-schools is waived. The rest of the expenses are to be borne by the student. Students are short-listed by ISB based on various criteria. This will be between Jan 10 – April 10.

Global Adventure Week is a one week tour of Singapore. About 30 students would tour Singapore for a week. The key take-aways are meeting up with a few banks, consulting firms, and Technology companies; interact with senior executives of these firms; visit University of Singapore; networking opportunities; understand Singapore and its economy; and of course fun. This will be during second week of October. Selections are based on submission of essays.

I am not participating in either. Instead, I plan to go to Singapore on my own during a term break to meet with a few senior bankers there, thanks to a friend who is going to arrange my meetings with them. To explore job opportunities, of course.