September Floods @ ISB

All Hyderabadis would remember September 2000, the month in which there were floods in Hyderabad. Till that time people forgot that the Musi is a river and that a natural disaster called floods can happen in Hyderabad. Floods in Hyderabad was heard only in the story of the Qutub Shah and her lover Bhagmathi. I experienced those floods first hand.

Similarly none of 430 odd students might have believed that there can be a flood of events at ISB. ISB is a place where everything is planned well in advance. Except the club activities everything else including placement week, graduation day is planned even before the batch joins.

The warm for the flood started in August itself but no one really realized that it will morph into the current situation. Yesterday I was interacting with our ELP client and he was asking about our routine and I couldn't come up with a quick answer. Reason for this is that there is routine at ISB. Everyday schedules change, new intiatives are taken, your club wants your contribution, assignments need your time but in between you have to squeeze for your personal interests too. So there is no routine. Only one thing is mandatory and that is attending the classes. Except that everything else depends on what time you can get up and how quickly you can finish your assignments. If you get up early you can go to the dining hall and have some nice breakfast otherwise you have to adjust with a toast or some noodles.

If I look at my last three days calendar, it was completely cluttered with all sorts of activities but despite all the important activities I have decided to do what I really want to do. For the first time after coming to ISB I think I have spent in a client interaction type of scenario trying to gather inputs for the project. We have spent exactly six hours - 3 hours off campus and three hours on campus, in a focused way without bothering what was happening outside.

Let me list down all the events in my calendar to give you an idea about what all is happening (we are still in the week) at ISB in this week but believe me this constitutes only 60% as I might have rejected some of the invitations:

1. Preplacement talk by an international bank equities group
2. Workshop on Investment Banking conducted by the CEO of a I Banking firm
3. Panel Discussion on Indian Retail
4. Search Marketing - Talk by a Google Sr. Manager
5. Panel Discussion on Indian Services sector, rural financing, and offshoring
6. Workshop on RFID (part of Global Supply Chain Summit)
7. Panel Discussion on Logistics
8. Discussions with Head of Private Equity Advisory firm
9. Mckinsey Structured Problem Solving Workshop
10.Session on personal interviews conducted by Alums

This is why I say,"Every second you spend at ISB is much more valuable than each rupee you spend at ISB" - value for money or value for time, something like that. Cheerio