Why PPTs are important to attend

The resume and the interview process form a very integral part of the corporate recruitment process. No wonder, then, that you'll find every Harry and his kin writing books on self-improvement, developing communication skills, resume-writing and even interview-dressing. End of the day, it is about marketing yourself. Ofcourse, some may debate that it is about selling yourself. I believe marketing would be more apt.

The best form of learning is hands-on. Is that not why they say you need to have industry exposure before you do an MBA? In case of a resume-submission process, there might not be much room for error but there definitely are opportunities to learn from your immediate surroundings on how best to market yourself and how best not to.

Take, for example, the Pre-Placement Talks (PPTs) that are currently happening on campus. The idea is that each company will speak to final-year students and market themselves with the objective of luring students to join them. It's an exercise to impress (of which, another form is the recruitment process of resume-GD-interview).

The students read about the company and it's karma on their website and if the company is particular good or particularly bad, they read about it in the newspapers as well. So, when a company comes on campus to talk to the students, they have an hour or two to impress the panel - which in this case, consists of the students. The standard trick is to get a few recent graduates and ask them to talk about the company, get a hot-ish HR chick to run through the "what we are looking for" slide and get a couple of guys, who can talk. And talk in a manner that can save their lives if it comes to that.

And when you sit through these presentations every other day, bartering a considerable amount of sleep, it is hard not to make a mental note of best practices and worst practices, which is why I love attending these PPTs.

A few things that a company just MUZN'T do are:

• Paraphrase the sentence "We are the most awesome company in the world and we kick ass!" and repeat it every other minute. The rationale is: If you are so awesome, it is likely that we know it and anyway, saying it a trillion times doesn't make you more awesome, it just gets onto the nerves of people. [Resume tip to self: Do not SAY you are confident, smart and a team-worker; SHOW it through activities]
• Open the presentation with a guy who has no clue of how to keep an audience engaged. And worse, one who reads out his slides and carries a heavy Indian accent. It is like GMAT or GRE, your "level" is determined by the first few questions you answer and then it gets progressively difficult if you do well. [Resume tip to self: Highlight your best on the front page. By the time the resume-reader reaches second page, he would have already decided]
• Start at 5.30 PM and go on till 8.00 PM. What's that statistic about attention-span of human beings - 20 minutes at the most or the like. So, two and a half hours is 8 times of that! We hardly manage to pull through our 50-minute classes, how are we expected to sit through for over two hours and not loathe the speaker(s). [Resume tip to self: Keep the resume short and sweet. If you don't have anything to say, then don't.]

On a somewhat unconnected note, it reminds me of a quote by the marketing guru, Seth Godin "You can't fool all the people, not even most of the time. And people, once unfooled, talk about the experience".

The 9th Sem and the protests

It's been quite a while since the last update. It is possibly because of the "9th semester syndrome."

Perhaps, it is that time of life when you reimburse your time and energy spent in the IIT system. Those who think IIT is a "necessarily evil between JEE and GRE" have started being nice to their profs to ensure a couple more adjectives in their reco letters. While the ones who use their IIT-degree as an envelope to mail their cover letter in to a company have started reading The Economist and the Economic Times. Then there is the parallel race for the IIT-IIM tag which involves sitting in a classroom and learning basics of grammar. There is also the segment which values the IIT degree at 15 crore during dowry negotiations who are beaming with a million-dollar-smile. Three million, to be precise. True or not - it makes for good blog content!

Lately, we have been in the news for reasons not particularly pleasant. Why'd you want to get up in the morning to the news of your teachers fasting in protest? On the other hand, it is pleasurable to wake up to news of mass-casual-leave protests. It is not often that your professor mails you saying "tomorrow's class stands cancelled" and wears a black band as a mark of protest. As a sidenote, the day the 9-to-9 fasting was held, the running joke in the insti was: "Aaj main apne do profs se milne gaya, dono ne bola ki lunch ke liye jaa rahe hain, baad mein aao.. ha ha".

The protesters argue that without quality pay, it is difficult to attract quality talent that is crucial for the IITs to sustain their edge. I find it a rather hollow argument because academia will never be able to match the salaries of the corporate world. Clearly, non-monetary incentives are what are needed.

A start would be to attract quality masters and doctorate students. It doesn't give me much hope when I see a PhD student googling for "how to find centre of mass of a thin plate" or when a faculty member tells me, what translates to: "In India, if you have a masters and you can write well, you are God". So, Mr. Sibal and the faculty association might want to try and address more fundamental issues than pay-hike. The faculty is also involved a plethora of consultancy projects, which from whatever little I know about consultancy, should be paying them in multiples of their salary.

Somehow, the administration (be it at the national level or the institute level) always tries to get rid of the syptoms than the disease itself. Why? Because it is far more easier: It is easier for the institute to kick people out of hostels for "ragging" than make a conscious effort to talk to the senior students, year after year. Because it is easier for the institute to increase minimum attendance requirement to 85% (which I must tell you is ridiculous and almost statistically impossible to adhere to - definitely not in the final year) than make the whole teaching experience in class better by investing in faculty training. Because it is easier to blame the poor communication skills of students than introducing compulsory "pesonality development" courses in the curriculum. Because, the administration has no freaking clue of what to do when the water reaches their nose.

What we really is need is a bunch of dedicated staff who can disentangle the threads and repair the system, which reminds me of the McKinsey partner who (in the pre-placement talk) said that they are working with IITB to improve the management of the institution. THAT is a good start. Late, yet, good.

What is a Writer's block anyway?

**Hiatus** is a word that comes to my mind. **Long** is an adjective that I may add to make it sound more attractive. **Writer's block** is a term that puts a nice cloak around my sudden loss of enthusiasm towards blogging and makes it presentable.

But, 10 days later, I am back on my blog. :-P

Oh, and a "define: hiatus" in your Google search window throws this up: "suspension: an interruption in the intensity or amount of something" - which, makes sense. Also, James Wales gives me a beautiful explanation of Writer's block. He/It says

Writer's block is a condition, associated with writing as a profession, in which an author loses the ability to produce new work. The condition varies widely in intensity. It can be trivial, a temporary difficulty in dealing with the task in hand. At the other extreme, some "blocked" writers have been unable to work for years on end, and some have even abandoned their careers.

So, the next time you are looking for a reason, use the above one.

To move over the inertia, I wanted something motivating to get me back to blogging. And it is here. The new batch of kids are here on campus. Anxious, nerdy, proud and day-1-arrogant freshers.

And here's a (new?) hypothesis I float: Freshies, by nature of their being freshies, are DUMB.

I wake up at 7 AM and drag myself to the bathroom to brush my teeth, and I find a guy happily staring into the mirror with a toothbrush in his mouth, while the water tap underneath is open and flowing. And at a volume flow rate good enough to force me to blog! This is not a one-off. Hopefully, the freshies will not disappoint me and provide enough evidence over the next couple of weeks to prove my hypothesis. Shall update here.

PS: Hypothesis: a tentative insight into the natural world; a concept that is not yet verified but that if true would explain certain facts or phenomena; "a scientific hypothesis that survives experimental testing becomes a scientific theory";

Dangerous political fantasies, and the whore called education

I can't help but cry foul over the setting up of so many new IITs. Yes, again.

Check out what today's edition of Economic Times has to say under the title "Losing sheen: Over 500 students say no to IIT"

Very recently, IT-BHU was in the fray to be an IIT. If you are a supporter of that move, you would not want to check this. A few days back, I read about a new IITB that is coming up! Hold your breath, it is not an abroad campus of IIT Bombay (which could be reality in a few years time), but a new proposal for an IIT at Belgaum, Karnataka.

What could be the reason? Karnataka, as opposed to many other states in the country has no IITs. Hence, setup an IIT there! Then, there is a demand from Kerala also to setup an IIT there for a similar reason. A very deplorable situation - the fundamentals of the education system of a country are compromised for mere political mileage. I suspect, Arjun Singh can take the entire blame and Kapil Sibal can consider himself equally guilty.

So, what does the ET article say?

As many as 505 students, who got an opportunity to study in these premier technological institutes, did the unthinkable this year; they refused to study in an IIT.

The reasons varied from ‘‘not having confidence in the new IITs’ ’ to ‘‘ getting allotments in not-so-popular streams’’, IIT officials said, adding that this experience might force HRD minister Kapil Sibal to do a rethink on his expansion plans for the IITs.

Does it take anything more than common sense to foresee this situation? I will not involve myself in the same old conversation again. The most frequently used rebuttal for the argument against, and quoted by ET in the article, is:

‘‘There were several parents who were not comfortable sending their kids to an IIT without a campus currently; few realised that all the old IITs, too, started from temporary campuses,’’ the head of one of the new IITs said.

In 1950s when the IITs were setup in temporary campuses, there were hardly ANY engineering institutions in India and there definitely were not 400,000 people taking the JEE. Now, there are. In India, "engineering" has ceased to be a discipline, it has become an obsession with students and parents alike. The reason - IITs. In such a sensitive scenario, screwing around with the system will leave irrepairable scars in the fabric of education.

Two decades hence, when the "engineers" - thousands from the IITs and lakhs from other engineering institutions - take up the mantle of powering the economy, the repercussions might be severe. For, we will have a whole generation that had forayed into a career, just to live someone else's dreams and follow someone else's footsteps.

The parliament of India, meanwhile is busy creating an uproar over the body-frisking of a former President. The power of democracy. The voice of the people. Whatever.

How stoichiometry problems expose the Indian education system:

The past couple of days I've been at home and have been teaching my sister some of her class XI science and mathematics. So, while I juggle among molarity, molality, dimensional analysis, significant figures (?!) and the likes, she keeps barraging me with random questions - most of which I could answer thanks to my JEE preparation. Whether she does this out of curiosity OR whether to verify my JEE rank credentials - I don't know.

Anyway, at one point, she asked me a seemingly trivial question in chemistry and she was surprised at the ease of the solution. She later told me that her teacher told her that this is "high-level" and she cannot solve it. I am surprised because all that the question demanded was an understanding of the mole concept. A few other anecdotes from her and my own experience of the Indian education system lead me to a disturbing conclusion: The system is decaying, and it is decaying fast, and we are running out of time, and it won't fix itself, and they are not really bothered!

My sister has a good theory about why the senior secondary teachers suck at their job. Let me paraphrase her:

Most of the class XI/XII syllabus is "irritating" and requires sound fundamentals to grasp the subject. Most teachers prefer to teach class X-and-below because it is "very easy" in comparison to senior classes and students hardly ask (or are encouraged to ask) "difficult" questions.

The few who actually manage to master the syllabus never return to teaching because there are greener pastures for such people. So, there is a void created and this void gets filled with sub-standard (or, as she said, "bekar") teachers.

To think of it, she makes perfect sense.

Going through her NCERT books, I realised that class XI/XII is indeed demanding (and rightly so!). To teach the thousands of these students, we need teachers of the very best calibre and it seems not forthcoming. You know that the system is rotting when your teachers advise the parents to arrange for "coaching", even for basic school syllabi; when the school lets a professional coaching institute "counsel" the students and for all their queries, there seems to only one answer - Jay E Eee. (After the counselling session, the coaching institute offered the students a discount on their JEE-coaching program.)

While Pranab Mukherjee is busy alloting thousands of crores towards education, I hope he realises that there are serious problems with the Indian education system that cannot be solved by pumping-in cash. Perhaps, we need a revamped pedagogy - one which understands the changing needs of the students while still able to deliver quality input.

The IITs face a somewhat similar crunch - 20-30% shortage of faculty. But thankfully, they are not appointing bekar professors (or so I'd like to believe). There was/is an attempt, though, to bring in reservations in the faculty, which would undoubtedly lead to a compromise of merit. Last I heard, the IITs managed to deflect the issue for the time being but Sibal was vociferous in claiming that "IITs should learn to live with faculty reservation". Pure bullshit.

So, Pranab dada giving the IITs 2000-odd crores is great news but it will hardly solve any of the fundamental problems that plague the IITs - and there are enough and more. (If you a new joinee to IIT - too bad I am squashing your dreams so soon :-) some of my other posts might offer solace!)

I leave you with a question that often bewilders me:

Why does India not have a network of world-class government high schools which attract and train the best minds in the country? And how come we have the world-class IITs and IIMs without a sound higher-edu foundation in the system?

Reliance Fellowship for Stanford MBA | Summer Awesomeness!

I think summers are a great time. Infact, summers are friggin' awesome times. I remember thinking last summer that things cannot get more awesome than they already were. This summer is slowly standing up to beat it!

A kick-ass coincidence is this: Three of us (I will qualify 'us' soon) had applied for a really amazing scholarship being offered by Reliance Industries called Reliance Dhirubhai Fellowship. It is an all-expenses covered scholarship to pursue the two-year MBA at Stanford University. It is not restricted to college students, infact most of the guys who apply are people with extensive professional experience.

So, of the 1500-odd applications (as of last year), Reliance selects about 50 fellows and then finally Stanford selects the 5 who will be offered the scholarship. So, that's a cool 80-odd lakh scholarship for two years!

The information page can be accessed here.
The list of fellows of last year is here.

Anyway, the coincidence part is this: Two of my friends...

- Gaurav Sapra - BITS Goa, just finished college this year - He is one of those 'childhood friends' that they talk about in stories and movies.

- Aniket 'Uss' Pangarkar- Insti fellow, going into final year now - He is my mentor, guide, chuddy-buddy etc. etc. He is also my partner in most, if not all, crimes in the insti. (They say gay-partner, but that's not true, trust me).

... and I had applied for this fellowship. And to our respective utter disbeliefs, all the three got through to the top 50!

So, while we reel under the sheer awesomeness (yes, indeed flicked from Kung-fu Panda) of the coincidence, those two have started preparing for their GMAT (provided free of cost by Reliance to the finalists) and I, having already taken my GMAT last month, am planning to write a book on how awesome summers, even summers like the ones in Chennai, can get! :-)

Mother

A n amazing song by Pink Floyd called "Mother".

Captures the mother-son relationship in a very beautiful manner:


Mother, do you think they'll drop the bomb?
Mother, do you think they'll like this song?
Mother, do you think they'll try to break my balls?
Mother, should I build the wall?
Mother, should I run for President?
Mother, should I trust the government?
Mother, will they put me in the firing line?
Is it just a waste of time?

Hush now baby, baby, don't you cry
Momma's gonna make all of your nightmares come true
Momma's gonna put all of her fears into you
Momma's gonna keep you right here under her wing
She won't let you fly, but she might let you sing
Momma's will keep Baby cozy and warm
Oooo Babe
Oooo Babe
Ooo Babe, of course Momma's gonna help build the wall

Mother, do you think she's good enough
For me?
Mother, do you think she's dangerous
To me?
Mother will she tear your little boy apart?
Mother, will she break my heart?

Hush now baby, baby, don't you cry
Momma's gonna check out all your girlfriends for you
Momma won't let anyone dirty get through
Momma's gonna wait up until you get in
Momma will always find out where you've been
Momma's gonna keep Baby healthy and clean
Oooo Babe
Oooo Babe
Ooo Babe, you'll always be Baby to me

Mother, did it need to be so high?

Lyrics courtesy: Lyrics007

On a related note, a stunning Gtalk status message of one of my friends some days back:

"If evolution is true, how come mothers still have only two hands?"