Back To Exams!!!

A one year MBA is like a treadmill with its speed turned to maximum and having its stop button jammed. You have to keep running in the hope that someone manages to get the stop button to work. In an odd kind of way, that’s what makes the one year MBA interesting too and got us all here together.

It seems like ages since I’ve reached Joka but it’s been just six weeks. Terms last for six weeks followed by the much feared end-terms. The terms itself are hectic enough with a full load of classes and complex assignments to boot. Well, how could I forget the quizzes where my marks could probably be better represented on the binary scale?

Time does not wait for anyone and before we knew it, our end-terms were upon us. When was the last exam that I had written? Forget it, when was the last time that I held a pen for 2 hours? Thinking back, I reached the conclusion that for all these years the keyboard was king and all that I had used the pen was for signing cheques from my ever depleting bank account. My freshly trained brain then started “problematizing” in order to find the actual problem. Eureka moment hits hard – you have to study and remember stuff before your writing even enters the picture.

The weekend before the exam, I decided that it was high time for action. No IPL Finals, No NBA playoffs, No Formula 1 racing, No French Open – big time “sacrifices” for a born spectator like me. I picked up the books from my bookshelf and slowly organized them on to my study table which until then just had my laptop.

My theory that the constant sight of the books would help me focus turned to be false. All it did was to help me channelize my energies towards ever increasing posts on Facebook. Nor was I the only one. Posts on Facebook multiplied exponentially leading to creation of new conjectures by the resident Gurus. Nobel prize winning stuff, surely. “Senti” songs from YouTube were pulled up and a new anthem was also adopted – “Bhaag Bhaag – D. K. Bose”

They say that “In life you need either inspiration or desperation”. With inspiration nowhere in sight, I turned to desperation. Calls back home helped more. Innocent questions from my son like “Papa, did you do your homework?” (Prodded by the wife in the background, of course) brought intensity to the desperation. All these combined with some useful shortcuts helped me to do some rudimentary sort of preparations for the exams.

Here comes Monday and the exams begin. Confused faces all over. Even the lamest of jokes are laughed at – a sure sign that all is not well. Papers are distributed. Some questions look familiar from the reading over the weekend. Can’t say the same for the others though – they may be in Greek and Latin for all I know. And yeah, I am able to write for 2 hours – not that I had a whole deal to write about. Old habits from college days come back to the fore - comparing answers, cribbing about the paper and strategy for the next day. Bunch of 30-year-somethings metamorphosed into kids!!!

Tension does strange things to people. Cafeteria talks suddenly became motivational pep talks. “Yaar, focus kar... Arjun ki aankh dikhe bas”. Poor Arjun, he would not have thought in his wildest dreams that someday down the future, people would be targeting his “aankh” rather than the “machli’s”.

A few of us decided that an hour of badminton in the evening would help in the relaxation process (post the afternoon siesta, of course). Bottled up frustration is vent on the poor shuttle. This worked fine until the day before the last exam when a mishap happened. High on adrenaline, yours truly went for a shot that he would never have dreamed of attempting and ended up with his partner’s racket coming crashing on his wrist. No serious injury though – Pain relief spray, tablets and a wrist supporter lent by a fellow wrist sufferer helped and I was able to write the paper the next day.

Even while the exams were on, we got our first result too. Word was out that grades have been put up on the notice board. This triggered debates and discussions on whether the notice board is the apt channel for this communication. When I heard last, there was no consensus. Technologically savvy people took photographs of the grade sheet and circulated it to the batch. Needless to say, this “noble” deed was not appreciated much.

Exams are now over and we have got an almost entire weekend off which has led to party feelings all round. Park Street and South City Mall are the places to hang out at. Some time at hand and hence some time to blog. Resolutions of being more structured and meticulous in the next term float. Will these be like the usual New Year resolutions that are broken by January 15^th or will it be abided by? As the title of the current Jeffrey Archer book that I am reading goes – “Only Time Will Tell”.