You sure you wanna raise your hand?

I have so many things to write about, but there's no time.

Not a problem. The situation is not too different from everything else. There's so much to study, but there's no time. There's so much of group work to do, but there's no time. There are so many assignments to complete, but, yeah, you guessed it, there's no time.

When there are so many things to do, the first thing you can do is to prioritize. You list the things in order and make a long queue of tasks (in our case, a queue which has no end). You then pick the first task in the queue and work on it.

So here I am, recording yet another piece of my stay here in IIM-A, so that when I go completely insane, I would atleast know how.

A couple of days earlier, I somehow drew myself into doing an analysis of the styles of the different professors instructing us. Each one of them has a different way of interacting with the student. Each professor has a unique style of responding to the student and getting him or her to think.

For instance, one professor would absolutely refuse to give any answers whatsoever. Almost philosophically, he'd tell us that we have all the answers within us. Probably, like the way God is within all of us.

Student: Sir, if I have received an advance payment for an order, but I havent delivered it yet, do I show it as sales in this year or in the next year.

Sir: Whats your answer?

Student: Umm... maybe the next year, because I recognize sales only when I have delivered it.

Sir: So, whats the question?

By the time we are done with the question-answer session, the professor would have asked us twice the number of questions we asked him. But damn, I never knew I had accounting within me all the time.


Directly opposite to this philosophical school of response is the cut-it-short, make-you-eat-your-words kind of response. Here's an example.

Student A: Sir, the employee doesnt leave probably because he is proud of his work and hence is loyal to the company.

Sir: When you are useless and have no other option, thats the only thing you can do - take pride in your work.

Student B: To motivate the employees, the company has to make them feel at home.

Sir: What are you suggesting? Bring a motherly figure to office to take care of them?


Then, there are others who would turn the question into an opportunity to display their wit and the class ends up laughing like crazy.

Student: Sir, I just cant write it in paragraphs. When I find it a lot more logical to write and read in points, why should I write in paragraphs ?

Sir: Thats because we dont do the logical thing always. Why do you come to the class ? We could probably install a virtual classroom in your dorm, and you could lie as you want (Here he makes a peculiar Nataraja kind of pose) with chips in one hand and a drink in the other. It is lot more logical and easier than getting everyone to gather in this class at a particular time every day. But still we do it.

Sir: In fact, WAC (thats the name of the course) prepares you for life. Thats what it does, it makes you a man. We take little boys and turn them into men. After you are done with WAC, you would have no more false expectations from life.


Another professor is neither the snubbing nor the joking kind. He would patiently listen to your point, as he does in this case.

Student: Sir, we have two different lines here. We have 36 bins of of 5 shirt material each. We have to split that into two batches such that they can be worked upon by different machines. We could probably split it into two batches of 30 and 6, but when we consider the demand ratio, it would be optimal if we split it into batches of 32 and 4.

Sir: (with a bewildered expression) Thats okay, but why are you telling me all this?


Thanks to these type of tactics, the students have moved away from the group discussion mode where they all clamor for air-time to say the first thing that comes to their mind, to a much more mature type of classroom discussion, at the end of which, you actually feel you have learnt something.

Some things stick in your mind though.

Like this professor, who has an outstanding way of telling you that you are raising a silly question. He does it by producing an analogy which would instantly make you realise your stupidity. Check this out.

Student: Sir, the firm's specialty has always been corporate law. They should cut down on litigation and eventually concentrate just on corporate customers.

Sir: What would happen if the corporate customer requires litigators?

Student: Sir, the company could probably refer the case to a firm with whom the company has friendly relationships.

Sir: Wonderful. If you have a beautiful girlfriend, would you go around introducing her to all your friends?