This is why Darden is so unique

This was the last video at the Follies. And clearly it made all of us feel privileged to be part of this huge family. Where else can you find a faculty which is so sporting and cares so much for the students. Even as a first year, it made me a little emotional to be done with half of school. Here's to making the most of the next year.

Of courses, cases, clubs and career

Q4 feels like a mad dash to finish first year. I feel like I've been playing catch up for weeks now. So much for this quarter being the end of the super intense and busy Darden core curriculum!

There's been a ton of group projects and team simulations. Some planned, some sudden. Some enjoyable, some just a burden. It also screws up the calender because you are constantly juggling to meet commitments and reach a compromise as far as schedules are concerned. The courses this quarter have been a mixed bag. Which brings me to the point that even if everybody says a course if helpful and really interesting, you can take it and have a totally different opinion about it. But it could also be the fact that for the first time, in this quarter, I have been slacking off a little. Call it the Learning Team effect. Actually, the lack of it. For the last 3 quarters, by virtue of having the best learning team in Darden (in whatever way you define "best" as), I was always trying to get my cases done and be prepared. With nobody to push me now, I have found time to procrastinate. I have gone into classes with half prepared spreadsheets and unread cases. Which make me ask this question. Am I doing it because the course doesn't excite me or is it the other way round.

The highlight in terms of academics has been the Global Financial Markets course. It's as current and relevant as B-School gets. You have the Federal Open Market Committee meeting during the day and at night the professor emails you the 1 page summary of the meeting so that we can discuss and debate what Bernanke thinks of the fed funds rate. Super cool. We have discussed almost all major economic issues. Greece, European bond markets, currency trends for Korea, Russia, Brazil, the Asian financial crisis, yield curves, price parity. Let me tell you that I am very average in that class. But I love it nevertheless. It's a lot of 'value add' for me. Really. I mean it.

The job hunt mystery continues to be exactly that. A mystery. From optimism to getting excited about functions and companies I didn't know earlier to frustration to anger to I-deserve-this-more-than-that-guy to I-don't-care-anymore to plain curiosity as to where I will finally end up - the whole experience has panned a gamut of emotions. It always helps to talk to people though. And there's a fantastic lot here. Who keep you grounded and give you a real sense of things. It's easy to crib about life being unfair when you have 99% of the things going for you. While applying for B Schools, I remember being perplexed by people at top schools talking of things that were not going for them and were worried. I had told myself I would never be that guy. At times in this quarter, I have come close to being that guy. But time and again, there have been friends - new and old - to remind me of that. And as a second year told me a few days ago I'm just waiting for the CEOs to realize in the first week of May that they need a few more interns!

On a different note, the last few weeks have given me a glimpse of what life in the second year might look like. All that I talked about earlier plus running a couple of clubs. Planning farewells and speaker events, ordering food and taking care of the logistics, getting all the information from the second years' as they prepare to leave and realizing there is so much that could be done. It's exhilarating and overwhelming in some sense. Also, the passion and energy of the guys who ran the clubs before us is infections to say the least. 

They say that the second year is what you make out of it. It's what you want your B School experience to look like. You have the power to design it. With a couple of weeks to go before phase one of this journey comes to an end, I find myself at this crossroads where I have some sense of the next phase but no clue about the bridge in between. But for what it's worth, I'm looking forward to it when it happens.

Spring In C'Ville

The weather's getting better by the day and sitting in classes or home is becoming tougher. I decided to get my cases done this afternoon but ended up spending almost a couple of hours walking and clicking pictures.

3 emails

It's been a rough day. Somewhat of an emotional roller coaster. A few reasons to smile and a bunch of not so pleasant outcomes.

It was a gorgeous day in Charlottesville. After having talked about exchange rates and purchasing price parity in the Global Financial Markets class, and sitting out in the sun (yes, the professor asked us to go out and enjoy the weather) talking about diversity at Darden for the Leading Organizations class, I was done for the day.

Things started to get a little rough after this.

First up was a series of emails which reinforced the disadvantages of being an international student. The result - no travel, no interview.

With nothing to prepare for, I went about reading my ethics case for the next day. ExxonMobil in Cameron and Chad. Midway through that, I get a rejection email from a recruiter. I already knew the outcome so it wasn't a surprise. What caught me off guard was the honesty and genuineness of the mail. I had talked to the guy a few times before. In fact, I had emailed him even before coming to Darden when I was 'school hunting'. He had graduated last year and so totally knew the hardships of this whole process. Our conversations had been very friendly and casual. It was one of the only 'networking' attempts which had gone well for me. Moreover, he was friends with one of my learning team mates. Talk about being a small world! 

To say that it was the best rejection mails I have received wouldn't be wrong in anyway. So much so that, it didn't feel bad. Also because, the guy who did get through to the next round is a good friend and really deserves it. 

So I emailed him back and we talked about some other stuff besides jobs and internships.

The day was getting over and I was at my house thinking of what to do when I received another email. Guess what, another reject. This time from a project that I had applied to. Again, not really surprising considering that I didn't have a good background match. But it's always hard when they all come together. For a moment, it felt like a classic Catch-22 situation. You don't get picked to do it because you don't have the background. And you don't have the background because you're never picked!

In between all these, a dear friend got perhaps the most prestigious scholarship at Darden as we cheered for him during First Coffee.

Tomorrow's another day. And I have no idea what's it got in store. The weather, at least, should be good.

Barcelona Diaries - 2/2

Besides the fact that the group going to the Barcelona GBE (Global Business Experience) looked like one I would easily get along with, the major pull through for this trip was the course itself - Strategy As Design. In layman's terms - go sightseeing in Barcelona and write a journal with pictures at the end of it.

Note: for an incredibly detailed account of the entire trip read this blog post.

The City...

...is absolutely gorgeous.  Antoni Gaudi took up the first two days of our trip and to be very frank, I would rather have done it in less time. The snowstorm which hit Barcelona on Monday (the first one in nearly 50 years!) made matters worse. Nevertheless, he deserves a mention. 

Gaudi 101 - Blending in with nature and unfinished grandeur 

The first thing that struck me during the visit to the unfinished church at Colonia Guell, was the fact that it didn't look anything like a church. True, it was unfinished and would have been much larger had the upper storey been built.  But yet, the rough cut twisted pillars, the uneven levels to match the topography and the broken ceramics – all combined to give the impression of something human, almost flawed, something with which you could associate yourself and not feel insignificant. I'm not sure I was too impressed with the beauty of the architecture. It defied conventional aesthetics and wasn't particularly pleasing to the eye.

Park Guell confused me. The contrast between the slanting, rough cut stone pillars which mimicked nature in form and color, and the fantastic entrance with its ceramic dragon looked conflicting to me. I am told Gaudi meant it to be a journey from the spectacular (almost garish) to the natural. But to me it was very sudden. It threw me off a particular mindset. Ironically, though, I liked visiting the place. Again, it defied conventional aesthetics but this time around, at least the 'park' looked quite spectacular.

If day 1 was about Gaudi being simple and natural, day 2 was about him surprising us by conjuring up gigantic structures. The Sagrada Familia, although only partially built is one of the most massive structures I have seen. The fact that he made the people believe in it so much so that billions of dollars are being spent to complete this Barcelona landmark by 2030 - is testimony to his belief in his art and himself.

I think I would have liked Casa Milla on a bright sunny day. Its wavy walls and colors gave a feeling of a wonderland. Unfortunately, after spending 2 hours inside the bus, all I wanted was to get back to the hotel room and get drunk on Sangria.

The heavy snowstorm meant that I had kept my camera inside the bus for most of the day. On Monday, the Barcelona GBE stock had taken a severe hit. Snowstorm and 2 days with Gaudi hadn't gone down well with a few (read the guys occupying the last few rows in the bus - me included). From Tuesday onwards, though, the stock kept climbing up.

From breathtaking views of the city to the architecturally alive city squares, in Barcelona, you could keep clicking pictures and hardly go wrong.

We also visited the Gothic Quarters of the old city and the church it housed. More traditional and more awe inspiring - it conformed to the vision of a church which I have.

Art and history apart, we also went to the Barcelona FC stadium - Camp Nou. One of my friends who went a few minutes before us saw Messi! We weren't that lucky. More disappointing was that Barca was playing on Sunday, the day after we left. Yes, it was the same game in which Messi scored a hat trick.

"More than a club"

The museum inside the stadium is worth mentioning. The long touch screen panels with rare video footage and summaries of the club's finest moment were a great way to keep the visitors engaged.  We played around with them for quite sometime.

So while we attended classes and roamed around the city during the day, the nights were dedicated to getting drunk and club hopping. Our favorite haunts were the La Rambla and the Porto Olimpico - places we would hit every alternate day to party till the wee hours of the night. The music was catchy, the women were attractive and the company was awesome. Dancing on bar tables, blacking out, craving for chicken wings at the sight of Hard Rock Cafe, drinking challenges between people weighing 100 something  and 200 something pounds respectively, and just insane amounts of alcohol - it would be an understatement to say that we had a BLAST!

Throughout the trip, we spent quite some time loitering around  La Rambla. Had it been a little warmer, it would have been the perfect place to sit outside a cafe and drink coffee or sangria or beer. There's always a ton of things happening. From street performers to Flamenco shows (which we attended). The fascinating part about Barcelona is how design and architecture is a living part of the city. It's not something which had to be seen in isolation. It's woven into the fabric of everyday life.

Balconies - La Rambla

Bicycles - saw them everywhere

End of La Rambla leading to the Port

I need another post to finish. To write about the 2 small towns we visited outside Barcelona - Girona and Besalu. Should be mostly pictures I think.

Barcelona Diaries - 1/2

This has been overdue. But the start to Q4 has been a little rough. Changing classes, new seats, the Barcelona hangover and the confusing ritual called recruiting have left me disoriented. The gorgeous weather and some great live music this weekend should make things better though.

The Art...

It was my first introduction to Dali and Picasso and I feel more cultured for having done that. For a first timer, the Picasso museum provided an easy to understand, chronological progression of Picasso's art right from his childhood. I'm no good judge of painting. I like some and I do not like some. And I don't really know why. But the museum was an education because it opened my eyes to the process that went behind Picasso's creation. The transition from a very talented boy who paints landscapes, pigeons and portraits of his family members in a traditional (classical ?) style to his gradual shunning of the norms, his play on perspective and his efforts to stretch the boundaries of what we call art - was very evident. His time in Paris, his affairs with women, the melancholy filled 'Blue Period' and his rendering of Velásquez's Las Maninas - it was a very useful albeit very short study into the creative process of Picasso, his influences and his view of the world around him. And now I know what cubism means.

Dali was more abstract and surreal. Looking at his art was an experience. The spectroscopic images, the pixilated Abraham Lincoln, the 'portrait' of May West – Dali took painting beyond being just on canvas to something which stimulated the mind in more ways. He used elements of engineering drawing to come up with abstract paintings which looked like a horseman when seen reflected on a glass bottle. His obsession with sex, science and Gala was different from Picasso’s recurring themes of family members and multiple women. It was a pity that the museum didn't have some of his more famous works. This is what my friends who had seen Dali told me.

ToDo - visit Dali and Picasso exhibitions whenever possible.

The Food...

...has a lot of meat in it. I didn't like the Paella, although a lot of it could be due to my general dislike for seafood. As a Bengali brought up on fresh water fish cooked in Indian spices, my food palates just do not like the 'rawness' in most of the seafood dishes. I keep trying though. And of course I think that bhape Ilish (Steamed Hilsa cooked with mustard) beats any other preparation in the world. It's a pity that outside India, 'Indian Cuisine' is essentially just Chicken Tikka Masala, Naan and Biriyani.

The Tapas was good and I absolutely loved the ham croquettes that we had at some places. A lot like the cutlets we have at roadside stalls in India.

The best meal that we had was at a Basque restaurant. The name was too hard for me to remember. The six of us finished 3 or 4 bottles of wine and had food ranging from ham croquettes to fried calamari to the more simple fried egg on potatoes to the absolutely delicious sirloin steak cooked with red wine. For dessert, we had a red colored liqueur called Patxaran. Yes, very fancy and all for 55 Euros. I'm not an advocate of spending tons of money in expensive restaurants. I do not buy the ambiance, presentation premium that they charge. So this was my most expensive meal till date. But this time around it was worth it. I think.

We came there the next day too to kick off Sarah's birthday celebrations. I tasted rabbit meat and it was awesome.

Any account of food in Barcelona would be incomplete without the mention of the pitchers of Sangria that we drowned. The alcohol content varied from place to place and so did the taste. But as the staple beverage during out trip (by the way, throughout the city, water was hard to find and cost more than beer), Sangria became the perfect accompaniment to the long dinners that we had.

Oh, and on Friday we had a unique lunch experience. Albert, the chef at Restaurant Coure is a practitioner of Molecular Gastronomy. A follower of Ferran Adria of El Bulli fame, he gave us a short introduction on the art and science of inventing new recipes by deconstruction of known ones. He boiled an egg in front of us at precisely 62 degree which coagulates the white but leaves the yolk intact! For more than an hour, he held a group of 25 MBA students captivated as he talked about the differences in Europe and the US in terms of eating habits, culture and business models and how at the given price McDonald's makes the best burger possible.

For lunch we had French Onion Soup which tasted heavenly but looked nothing like it. Predictably, I didn't like the clam. The Ox Tail (yes, we are getting fancy here again) was delicious. I thought it was a lot like the mutton I used to have in India.

So much for now. There's a lot more to talk about. The city itself being the most important part. Hopefully, the post wont be as delayed as this one.

Why MBA

In 2010 the decline of the MBA will cut off the supply of bullshit at source

Skepticism about the value of an MBA degree and the general belief that it just teaches you to say sentences like - "I think XXX's competitive advantage in this high growth market ensures sustainable growth in the short to medium term." without any knowledge of the underlying fundamentals, is nothing new. When I was applying last year, one of my friends had said something to the effect of MBAs being glorified bullshitters who earn a lot more than they deserve. An engineer like me, he believed in the simple theory that there are always people who know a particular area better than any MBA does. A developer designs and writes the code; marketing is basically making emotional ads and getting people to buy it; and then there would be a finance guy who will tell you how much money you made. An MBA puts his hand everywhere without thoroughly knowing anything and ends up making more money and having a fancy title. An MBA never adds value. Not to the firm. Not to the self.

So what has 3/8 of an MBA done for me. In one sentence, made me more aware. How are share prices calculated. Why does the fiscal deficit matter and why the hell do governments go crazy about exchange rates. Who sets them anyway. What's all this talk about cultural fit and strategic alliance that newspapers talk about when a merger happens. What is marketing if not making ads and fancy banners. Wikipedia had answers to most of these. And you would say $100K is a bit too much to pay for awareness. Of course, there's the network you build along with the experience of living in a different country and culture. But truly, my biggest gain so far has been to pick up a Wall Street Journal or an Economist and understand what the article means. Again, I had pretty modest goals coming into B school!

The courses this quarter in particular have seemed to tie up a lot of lose ends. A company valuation is more than just the discounted cash flow. As our professor says, its as much art as it is science. Why the Chinese Govt. doesn't want the Yuan to appreciate and what would the EU do with Greece are just some of the questions about which I can now think. Pricing strategies, the Nash equilibrium, Second Price Auctions, Microsoft in India & China, PepsiCo's 'Beat Coke' strategy, Mars' acquisition of Wrigley's - 200 cases and a few dozen tech notes into the Darden experience, I am pretty sure that the limiting factor is my ability to take in what is being thrown at me.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that I've become a subject matter expert in any of these. But the fact that I can appreciate the issues which go into most of these and am beginning to develop the ability to synthesize all of it is what makes this experience unique. True, there's some amount of bullshit that comes with it. I can totally see myself talking to somebody and pissing him off by saying something like "but look at the strategic implications!". And I think that's part and parcel of the whole package. The jargon creeps into our system. But I would like to believe that for the most part, there is some, at least some logic behind those cliched words.

I came to Darden with no formal business education. And I'm glad it was that way. What it has meant that, almost everything is new to me. Yes, I am a computer engineer and I have no problems understanding normal distribution, linear equations, probability and decision trees. Having written software program does makes it easy to build a DCF model. And if statements and modular designs are not an issue at all. But learning to think about the judgement that goes into each decision has been the really interesting bit. Acknowledging that often there are no right answers has been tough. And appreciating that the real value add is not so much in the individual concepts, but in their interplay has been fascinating.

Halfway Through First Year

One of the great things about not being able to think too far into the future is that life becomes so much more eventful when seen through you own eyes. Things move at a pretty hectic pace in a B School. You hardly get time to take a step back and ponder. To look at the rear view mirror and see how far you've come. But when you do get that window of time and your mind starts to connect past incidents to light up the road which has brought you here; more often than not, you sit back and marvel at how things have changed. How you have transformed.

Quarter 3 has been easy so far. Fridays off and lighter Wednesdays and Thursdays. Perhaps because it's the interview season. It's also the time when second years start thinking about their reentry into the 'real world'. You would frequently hear about ToDo lists to be checked before school ends and trips to be made. Some take it easy and relax. Others take as many courses as they can since it might be the last time they go to school. First years realize how time flies. And prospective students begin to reach the end of their application process. In the last few weeks I've interacted with a few applicants who have successfully made this journey. And my mind went back to the time when I had got the call. It had made a lot of things fall into place. Past failures, which had closed a few doors and opened a few more; decisions which were made at times impulsively and on the rare occasion with thorough analysis; and events over which I had little control. Almost like the trees we make in our Decision Analysis class. Options and Events. You take some, you lose out on some.

So like I mentioned earlier, it's internship hunting time in a first years' life. Stress levels typically increase during this period. But then again, different people react so differently to the same circumstances. I'm in the 'still looking' club right now. I think it's early days and we form the majority! The point is, a year back, I couldn't have imagined myself in this situation and my reaction to it. Getting into B School was the only thing I had in my mind space. I had left the next chapter for later. And now I find myself in the middle of first year. Thinking about internships and beyond. Trying to balance a myriad things and not lose perspective at the same time.

I'm a staunch believer of the theory that any experience is what you make of it and no matter how much you've heard about it before, unless you are in the midst of it, you really do not have a clue of what it's like. Darden has conformed to that. Memories, experiences, dilemmas and hopes. That's what this blog is supposed to be about. And right now, I'm absolutely loving the abundance of all of it.

Travels During Winter Break - 2

Pike Place Market - Seattle

Spent an evening roaming around the place. It was the highlight of the 3 day trip. Had a very small city, touristy feel in spite of being so close to downtown Seattle. People playing guitar and piano. Some playing the guitar and the harmonica while hula hooping at the same time. The first Starbucks, the fish market, the fruit sellers, the magic shop, the dozens of stalls selling decorative items and jewelery, tourists clicking pictures - it was an exercise in observation. And a very entertaining one at that.

But for the labels on each fruit and the price tags, I would have thought that I was in India.

Knew about the iPhone app. Hadn't seen one before!

Piggy Banks

The flashy neon sign

Slide Guitar

Felt surprised and sad at the same time. He was playing some beautiful pieces.

But people around him were mostly oblivious. A few tourists stood by and made short videos.

Travels During Winter Break - 1

New York, Washington DC, San Francisco and Seattle. A visit to 4 cities during the winter break has made me realize how easy it is to travel in a new place. All you need is an iPhone (actually any smartphone with GPS would do) and an ATM card. A car and a friend who can drive helps too.

Coming from India, it's exciting, to a degree of mind boggling; the way technology is used in everyday life in the US. From petrol pumps to car washes, from self checkout counters at retail stores to vending machines and from the ubiquity of the 3G network to the proliferation of smart phones - things which I considered luxuries even a few months ago have become necessities now.

New York, with its avenues and streets forming a perfect grid, is tailor made for a GPS system. All you need is a sense of direction and you should be good. And even if you're directionally challenged, the iPhone makes sure you get it right. So commuting between Union Square (where my friend was staying) to Times Square was as easy for me as a resident New Yorker. I could choose to walk if it wasn't too cold and I had time to kill (like the time when I had a 3 hour window and decided to walk around downtown NY and ended up visiting MoMA). Or if I had to take the metro, my iPhone would give me to the minute, the arrival and departure timings along with any transfers I needed to make. All I had to ensure was that I got that information before entering the subway since there was no network coverage here. My friends from Singapore, Seoul and Hong Kong were more critical though. Since they were used to better systems while working there. I wasn't complaining.

And this became a pattern which extended beyond just taking public transports. In DC, Seattle and San Francisco, where we drove quite a bit, people took turns being the navigator. Constantly trading off between the battery sucking yet faster and highly intuitive iPhone app and the talking but at times slower GPS having the non QWERTY keyboard. So in the Bay Area, where we had to travel a lot between downtown San Francisco and Palo Alto, Fremont, Sunnyvale and Mountain View; it was a combination of the Bay Area Rapid Transport and our always willing driver and trip leader who saved the day. The 30 mile-ish rides were fun though. San Francisco had a great Rock n Roll station which played classic rock. Our topic of conversation during the rides could be anything ranging from the geography of the area (which was so very different from C'ville) to the infrastructure in the US to the high number of Porches and Corvettes that we saw there to crazy drivers changing lanes to the high number of Indians and thus Indian restaurants. My friend in Stanford told me that the Indian community in Mountain View and Sunnyvale wanted the cities to be renamed Pahadganj and Surajpur respectively! It could totally be a rumor. But it was the most ridiculously hilarious thing I've heard in some time.

Finally Seattle. And this time we had these 2 'big ass' vans to carry the group around. Which made finding parking a little difficult since the clearance needed was 7'. Anyway, GPS to the rescue again and besides finding parking, we didn't have any issues navigating in a totally new city.

Reviews of bars and restaurants, public transit, checking mails on the go to transferring money from one account to another - having all of this at my fingertips and realizing how much it has enabled us to not plan ahead was a revelation of sorts. Maybe it has made me less 'smart' so as to say. Maybe, it means that having fewer things to remember, I am after all becoming too dependent on technology. But nevertheless, for now, for me, it's akin to a discovery. A new way of going about life. And I'm beginning to understand why after staying here for a long period of time people find it tough to go back. I'm not picking one over another. But appreciating how having different priorities can lead one to choose a particular lifestyle. One country over another.

Now if only my iPhone would be more efficient in receiving calls instead of deciding not to ring at all or directly go to the voice mail on several occasions. AT&T has no clue. Time to get to the Apple guys I guess.