Week 15 - MBA's day out!

Week 15! Monday didn’t feel like a regular Monday. Two reasons: No morning class, and Mansha was still here. I was still holding on to the holiday mood.

Not only was she on campus, but she also attended my first class of the week. Yes, I took special permission from the faculty to let her join the Operations session. Her experience - let’s just say Operations means very different things to doctors and to MBAs. She left for Mumbai on Monday afternoon, and I had to pull myself out of “term break mode” and get back into Part 2 of Term 2.

This phase brought a couple of new courses. The most interesting (and inconvenient) being Management Communications (MC). The class split each section into two groups, and my group got the odd timing, 7:15 PM to 8:30 PM. It takes a serious internal push to convince yourself to show up for class at that hour. And with the amount of interaction and expression expected, even the classes are not convenient for an introvert like me.

Another new course was Leadership Skills (LS). The professor had us hooked within the first fifteen minutes. But Friday was when things got truly fun. We had two back-to-back LS sessions where we played group games, each followed by leadership insights. It’s not every day you see 80 blindfolded students trying to form a perfect square in the middle of the football field.

Academically, the weekend looked relaxed with only one class on Saturday. But my Saturday was anything but light. We had interviews for all the TRBS marketing team applicants. The two very talented cell heads were the primary interviewers, but I made sure to be part of most conversations and handle the operational hiccups the team faced. TRBS is already giving me a little preview of what post-MBA manager life feels like.

Sunday was for exploring. A friend from Ahmedabad decided to take us around the city. We started with coffee at Kaffaa (a very good cafe just outside campus). First stop, Adalaj ni Vav, a five-storey-deep stepwell built in the 15th century. Then Sabarmati Ashram, followed by the Sidi Saiyyed Masjid with its iconic stone-carved windows that inspired the IIM-A logo. We wrapped it up with dinner at Patang : a revolving restaurant with a beautiful view of the Sabarmati River from 221 feet up.

From having my wife in class, to blindfolded sessions on the football field, to playing manager at the TRBS interviews, to spending an entire day outside campus, this was hands down the most non-regular week at IIM-A yet.