Return of the Son

The prodigal son returns...

It's been a long time since I wandered into these portals... There will be many who would have been a trifle upset had they bothered to read about my misadventures in the first place.. but the truth must be told... and so here i am.. with a new set of stories and foot-in-the-mouths...

The first things that students miss when they reach wimwi, is sleep... And no, it is not because we are studying all the time .. rather quite the contrary... we don't study when we are supposed to... we will soak up all the latest gossip on campus, discuss the current industry happenings threadbare for a couple of hours and finish a couple of episodes of Prison Break and finally we will hit the books.. obviously the stress levels are therefore high...
It is not for nothing that this place teaches us JIT- everything is always Just-in-time... assignments, reports , everything is given at the last possible minute... Each time, after every adventure, I solemnly promise - next time, I will put in a 24 hour buffer for my WAC report...
What is fascinating to watch is how those buffers wear down and are completely annihilated when faced with deadlines...

This strange thing happened with me the other day... We have study groups; six of us in one group and we work on the various assignements given by Profs... one such assignment was the study of how technology changed the way banks do business...
We were called to present the finding of two of our group members...Often ,what happens in such situations is that one person has done the actual work and another is asked to present.. This can sometimes lead to hilarious situations...The essence is to last 5 mins that are allotted... This is what followed :
Groupie1 : We have analysed the way technology affects loans processes of banks... We take a typical case.. When we want a loan, we first go to the bank and they give us a form which we have to fill.. On this form, we have to give details such as our name, our father's name , our date of birth, our address...

By this time, the class realises what has happened.. They saw that we were only five of us.. We got locked in such a situation, where the guy who did the actual work was up so late working on the assignment that he ended up missing the class .. and since none of us had any idea of what to say, we had to resort to such filibustering tactics.. we would have gotten away with it too had the class not resorted to wild thumping and applauding groupie1's attempt to save us from disaster...
The Prof responds:
" I can guarantee you that all of us know what is there in a bank form, and we are not interested in knowing what you know... Could you pray please proceed ? "

Groupie1 : Ok, so once you have filled the form, you submit it to the loan officer and from there, the file and application is passed to a loan committee and this committee has to verify all the details filled in the form. They do this either by calling our references or by checking if we are bonafide students... They have other techniques as well...

At this point, the class goes beserk.... Groupie 1 tries his best to keep a straight face, the other three groupies have no idea what in the lord's name is going on.. and I am staring faraway, lost in space.. praying for the nightmare to get over ....

The third term has started.. This term is filled with group oriented activities.. essentially we focus on organisational aspects of a company, and its HR related issues..
At the same time, new traditions have been opened up to us.. There are have been elections for the Student Activity Council - this holds significance as this group of elected 12 guys will ensure our well-being for the next year.. from mess food to placements to movie stocks.. these 12 guys take on huge responsiblities next year...

I am ending with this conversation that happened last week..

Prof : So Rohit, are you awake ?
Rohit (dazed) : Yes sir..
Prof : Good, tell the class what you have learnt in our last class..
Rohit : Sir... in the last class, we studied production quanties and how they varied with costs..
Prof : How did we do that ?
Rohit : Sir, through ...uh... through curves..
Prof: Hmm.. what kind of curves.. ?
Rohit ( Makes gestures with his hands) : Sir, these curves would come down and then go up .. (he is trying to say that the graph has a minima but ends up on a different plane)
Prof: Rohit, we understand your state of mind... maybe you could say "graphs" !!!
Rohit ( goes red) : Yes..urg.. sir..
Prof : So where did we get this data from ?
Rohit (silent and trembling a bit)
Prof : Rohit, answer...
Rohit (very very reluctanly and with an expression of knowing that doom is near) : Sir, we got these from the FIGURES...

Class goes wild and starts thumping the desks.. Profs looks incredulous and walks away...

Such are the adventures of life....