A day in my life at ISB

00.00hrs. Here comes a new day while I am still trying to grab the concepts taught the week before, it comes the way it has always come from day one of the course ,like a stealthy burglar just sneaking past you when you are trying to make some sense of the past one, gotta keep glued to the chair and make a linear program that makes sense to me, at least.

02.00hrs.Still can’t make head or tails of the linear program, better catch some sleep have to attend class tomorrow.

07:30hrs.triiiiiiiiiiiiiing….. get up sleepy head 45 min. to class, shave , eat, have a bath (not necessarily in that order) .

08:16hrs.phew! made it ( with a paper glass of coffee in one hand and mouth full of sandwich), the prof is here and will throw some gyaan on a case about contact lenses for chicken, I must admit I learned about prescribing contact lenses for humans in ophthalmology but not about contact lenses for chicken (for those who are interested they are not really contact lenses in the traditional sense i.e. they do not correct the chicken’s vision ).The whole class is full of people like me ie with coffee cups and red eyes (half also have a day or two of beard’s the other half is naturally gifted).So the chicken case starts and there are dissenting voices everywhere nobody agrees with anybody else, but by the time it is over everybody has been able to work it out ,Amazing.

10:20 hrs. The chicken case is over ,time for a cup of coffee and then rush for DMOP

10:45 hrs. The prof. is in (he was actually in 5 min. before ,these are the only guys I have never seen getting late), now we start with Decision Making And Optimization ( DMOP for short, sometimes I think it should be called D MAUT = The Death), we had a joke in the medical college that went “respiratory system is the graveyard of medical students” as maximum guys used to fail in respi cases, I just hope this is not the graveyard of management students.

10:50hrs. I am lost, it is all over, five minutes into the lecture I am regretting leaving medicine and coming here , when will I be able to make sense of this ?. I hope it is in this lifetime.

12:56 hrs. It is finally over , gotta give credit to the guy he is one of the best, tries to explain the silliest of queries with the most amount of patience I have seen so far. Let me go and grab some lunch.

13:30hrs.The guys at Goyal dining hall are sadists , they enjoy cooking seven course meals when they know that nobody will be able to do justice to it , will even the scores in the term break. Now let me sit down and work on excel ,I am the only bloke in the whole batch who has never seen it before. Sudhanshu is working on DMOP , Kiran is reading Global Economics.

15:30hrs. Time for a tea break , we fight for five minutes on whose turn it is to make tea and who will wash the dishes , true democracy at work ,finally a compromise is reached I will make the tea, in the same period Sudhanshu will smoke a cigarette (outside the room) and Kiran will update his blog, after that Sudhanshu will do the dishes and I will try and update my blog while Kiran will tell us what he read in GLEC.

15:40hrs.Everything over ( had tea, smoke, Kiran updated his blog, I could not ) back to the chairs, let me start with corporate strategy have to read a case about DELL , how just in time inventory helped them, wonder if this can be applied in a hospital ?

18:30 hrs. Time to break from studies, will go and play something (tennis , badminton , squash ) depending on which court is empty and which racket can I borrow.

19:30hrs.No luck today all courts were full , had to do a bit of running and tried to learn how to put the basketball in the hoop, let us have some dinner and go back.

20:30hrs.Finished dinner had a walk, suddenly remembered that a DMOP assignment is due tomorrow and a party at the recreation centre is due tonight, man!, why do assignments and party’s clash, call up the study group to find they are already working on the Assignment, rush to meet them and try to understand how to optimize a pirates haul (a problem we were given).

23:00hrs.Still trying to work out how much of what loot (gold coins, jewels, ivory, silver) should the pirate take, man there are four more q’s and it has to be submitted by 7:00am, also have a party to attend.

23:05hrs.Wife calls up and I suddenly remember that it was my son’s first day at school today, ask her how it went, it seems he was crying and she is getting all worked up. I try to pacify her and tell her that it will all work out, she is finally okay and I tell her that I have to go back to the assignment (but I forget to mention the party , now I wonder why ? must be getting forgetful.)

23:45hrs.I get back to the team, they seem to have miraculously solved three questions in my absence,no wonder they don’t mind my absences. The chances of completing the Assignment , Attending the party and Sleeping, all in the same night, suddenly seem much brighter , but wait , the pre reads for tomorrow’s lectures, oh man ! I forgot those, here goes the sleep.

00:00hrs. Here we go again,one more day has slipped stealthily by…….