Joka Diary - 9

In case you didn't notice, I am back from the Europe trip.. alive and kicking! And into my 6th term now. There is so much to talk about the trip, but I sadly lack both the time and patience to write it now. But I promise, we will talk about it at length, sometime.. it might be next month, next year or next life(for me/for you/for both).. but talk we will. And those who are in a hurry, are cordially invited to look at the pics posted on Picasa (link available on request!). I have wasted an enormous time uploading them- an entire afternoon, and my labor of love shall remain unrequited till some kind soul wastes a couple of hours going through them. You see, that is how we usually compensate for the time wasted-- by wasting more time.

Alright, where were we? In the sixth term? Right! We have a lot of visiting faculty teaching the courses in the second half of the program. And, the students are usually very enthusiastic about the courses taught by the foreign Profs. Not because they are better than our IIM Profs, but because they are perceived as 'chilled out' and easy-to-please. Their expectations from students are usually lower than that of the resident faculty. The visiting faculty almost always finds us exceeding their expectations, and shower us with praise. Also, their evaluation system is pretty lenient, which means that they do not derive the-typical-to-IIMC pleasure by giving us bad grades. And so, we lap up their courses. We means the lazy, hungry-for-appreciation mortals like yours truly. I have taken up almost all the courses offered by VFF. Business valuation is one such course, the prof comes from NY. He has a very heavy American accent, and frequently talks about us falling 'bahind' if we don't put sufficient effort. Now this reminds me of a childhood incident, which I can't resist sharing. I have a motley set of cousins - funny, innocent, bumbling and very lovable. One of them, cousin Y had this habit of saying 'bahind' for 'behind'. His Dad tried to correct him --'It is behind, not bahind'. Now, cousin Y was already 6 yo by then, and at his advanced age, obviously knew better than to put too much trust in his merely IIT graduate father. He replied with loads of spunk-- 'I don't 'balieve' you!'. The preaching father was appropriately quietened, more like stunned into silence, while the rest of the family struggled to stifle laughter till we were out of his earshot. I wonder how long will it be before Pari stops believing me!