Adieu to Term 3 !!

We had Optimisation Techniques , Business Communication, Strategic Management,
Financial Management II & Chinese in Term 3. Dr. TAS Vijayaraghavan of XLRI took Optimisation Techniques for us. TASV’s teaching style was different. He was a very hands on teacher. We would have asked him to do the chairs & tables simplex problem at least thrice & he readily taught us again & again. He also used a lot of chalk. Other Profs generally stay away from chalk & use the whiteboard. The global oil case & Maharashtra Cement Corporation case were all just too good & he demystified those tough problems. However his mid term & end term question papers were real terror & proved us that we had a lot of ground to cover up in OT. He used funny caricatures in the OT question papers, which were in a way embarrassing to all of us.

We had Dr.Ram Sriram from Georgia State University, Atlanta teaching us Financial Management II. He had very matured approach of handling our classes. He told us that he has no interest in teaching volumes , but he wanted us to understand whatever he taught. His focus was on learning rather than teaching. His classes used to be more of debates than of one way lecturing. His classes on Risks & Return , IRR & NPV methods were particularly interesting.

Strategic management was taught by our beloved Prof. S Sriram, who has been leading Great Lakes in the last three years. His classes were very interactive with many of us participating. Memorable cases include the Honda case (crafting strategy – Henry Mintzberg ), GE case , Crown Cork case , Coke Vs Pepsi case, Michael Porter - P&G Video , Wal Mart case were really good & helped us understand the overall strategy employed by all these firms.

Business Communication classes were hugely awaited. This could because of the faculty Prof. Lalitha Maheswaran who handled the classes with élan & her own unique style. The course was very interactive & she made us speak & also participate in Group Discussions. Her feedback sessions were good & generally gave us scope to evaluate ourselves against our classmates.

Lighter stuff :

My birthday party celebrations on 21st Aug were really memorable. Kamal & Satya did a great job in ensuring that this birthday will remain very close to my heart. Friends smeared the cake all over my face & though embarrassing it was a different feeling. After that , I had the tough time, got the birthday bums. One friend was holding me by my arms, tucked under his shoulders, another friend held my legs at the other end. Friends who were singing Happy Birthday charged in & showed their real love by kicking bums. I had to beg guys to stop their pyara bum kicks. It has been a tradition at Great Lakes , that everybody gets innumerable bums during his birthday, so that it remains an unforgettable experience……

We had a get together arranged by Senthil Prakash on 15th September. We had it in Hotel Savera. We could occupy the cornermost table in the roof top the 10 / 12 floor building , which gave a wonderful view of Chennai. I met SP , Anbu Maran , Mahesh , Karuppaih, Nanda after 5 years & it was a wonderful feeling. We shared our goals in life, about our future life partners & about what we did in the last 5 years etc., It was real good fun. The most important part was the fact that the next day Balaji’s birthday & we were in Savera till 12:00 & wished Bals happy birthday & then we dispersed.

Term 4 is currently in progress. The term has a strong HR focus because of the fact that it has HRM Systems , Business & Society, Re engineering Human Potential , Market Research & IT for Managers.

We had lot of fun doing our Market Research Project. After the I stage of designing the questionnaires, we were out to the field to collect responses. We chose Spencers & we had spent around 2 hrs the first day in Spencer & got valuable feedback from lot of strangers. It gave us an understanding on the types of issues that interviewers face. After the first session of data collection we had our debriefing session , wherein we changed quite a number of questions. We could collect only 10 responses in Spencers. We had a lot of interesting experiences , I had met up with the Guy who was actually the security manager at Spencers & the guy actually started asking me whether I got the permission my Information Desh before starting the data collection. We silently slipped to the second floor & started the job. After the debriefing session , we went to Odessey & spent around 2 hours & got some 20 odd responses. It was because of the special efforts of Ipsita. Last day of data collection we had been to Besant Nagar ATMs today. We got around 20 questionnaires. In total we expect to collect around 100 responses before we sit for the analysis. Totally it was a great experience meeting people & understanding the different opinions people have on the same issue…..

Now its time for me to wind this lengthy post & will catch you up with the reflections on Term 4 later !!!