A quick question: What is the difference between boring professors in an MBA class and the editorials in a business daily?
It is actually simple — professors earn their daily bread discussing how bad the Indian economy is, saying it’s a no-hope one. And they all advise us to go to Havana or Nigeria. On the other hand, the business dailies always point out the strengths of the economy because of varied reasons, such as Modi’s expected coming in 2014 or Shah Rukh Khan releasing Chennai Express 2 and so on.
A marketing student may read these lines on the basis of segmentation theory, saying “morning happy students” form a different segment than “boring evening students”. In marketing, you can add some creativity – from branding the Mona Lisa smile for pregnant mothers to getting a star grade in marketing for writing the same in examination papers.
Indeed, sometimes the MBA can be seen as a grand design by God to teach a bunch of confused students to stick together at all times, good or bad. In a world of cartels and oligopolies, the MBA teaches us to stick together and occasionally fight over bread, Maggi and girls.
Those who fall in love are the typical class bunkers, invariably the most popular people. They are the face of the college and the lifeline of gossip. Love and grades never go hand in hand. So, a low grader creates a gloomy atmosphere in the hostels. On campus, one can always tell who is specialising in what. Typical marketing majors are the ones who will not sleep at night, courtesy their quest for the most animated PPTs. Typical finance majors are the ones with the lame jokes. The HR girl gang will eat sleep and drink together and the operations ones will only be seen with Temple Run on their mobiles.
On the academic front, the MBA is pretty simple. We have tonnes of case studies, dozens of projects, assignments, slide share, Wikipedia and Alumni blogs on how to copy assignments. There are unofficial training sessions where students teach other students how to rewrite a sentence from a friend’s assignment without getting caught during plagiarism checks.
Thanks to this training, after an MBA, many of us are actually aiming for the Man Booker Prize. It’s not our fault, we are wired like that. For instance, the complex juggernaut of equity research teaches us the age-old axiom of “don’t put your eggs or stocks all in one basket!”
Anyway, the real fun in an MBA is actually during placements. After all the hard work, lectures and business etiquette preparations, the CVs are collected and thrown in the air. The recruiters who are selecting us, chant a job requirement mantra like 90 per cent marks in class 10 and 12 and catch a few CVs from the air. The selected few are grilled to the bone and whosoever gives up and pledges 16 hours of slavery is sentenced to a workaholic career.
They always say an MBA is ‘tough to enter but easy to exit’. The system itself chucks you out with a dozen certifications and tonnes of PPTs.