Ok, I'm going to avoid a weekly update since I dont remember anything from each week. Things just pass by so fast, I didnt even realize that three months had passed. I'm only going to write down a summary of the course, so we can get down to Quarter 2.
Micro economics deals with the basics of consumer and supplier behaviour. We learnt about what affects supply and demand, how changes in price and income can affect both demand and supply. It was fascinating to note the variations that can occur depending on what type of good you have. For example, a normal good would show an increase in demand if incomes rose, but inferior goods (low quality, or even out-of-date) tend to show a decrease in demand when incomes rose, primarily because people chose better goods. We saw how people tend to make a tradeoff between two goods depending on their income, so that they can get maximum satisfaction by spending their money optimally. We then also saw how companies can increase production in the short run, but cant beyond a limit... and how they can build more capacity by making capital investments. Was fascinating to see the basics behind how consumers and firms think and act. The prof was also really passionate about the subject. He had such vast experience and seemed to have anecdotes on just about anything! Yea, he was a little impatient, but hey, first-year students are always dumasses in the beginning arent they, we deserved it! :)
Financial Accounting taught us how to read annual reports of companies - balance sheets, profit and loss accounts, cash flow statements. The nitty gritties into understanding the health of a company, all by looking at the annual report... wow, that was just too much. As a pure techie, I remember screwing up my nose at all things financial. Now I understood what it meant when someone spoke about assets and liabilities. I understood how you recognize revenue and the different types of doing so. It's so cool that FinAcc is like another language all together, half math, half English, it truly felt like I could look at a company's report and intelligently mutter something about it!
Strategy Management was what I enjoyed the most. I had slept through atleast a couple of classes in the other two, but this one... this one was just awesome. Understanding why a company does the way it does, or behaves the way it does. I learnt that a company is not just successful due to the way it is run, it is also dependent on the industry. Apparently, there's this thing call Porter's Five Forces that shape industry. It helps determine if an industry is worth getting into in the first place. Another is the resources of the company that follow a VRIN funda (Valuable, Rare, Inimitable, Non-substitutable). I know that Maadus and Gujjus claim that business is in their blood, here was that knowledge quantified and brought down to a science! To understand what makes a company tick, how people shape strategies, was surely the coolest insight into corporate behaviour. Not to mention that we understood how different industries worked, their quirks and their activities. I sure hope I dont forget the learning out of this subject.
One thing that these subjects seemed to implicitly mention, was that if you had a hunch about something, dont just go out and yell about it. Look for hard facts, and numbers that will help u substantiate it. Anyone can go out and yell from their soap-boxes, but it's when a person looks for evidence and you provide it without him especially asking for it, that you become effective. One of the many steps to becoming a manager.
The exams were a disaster, but since I am not that bothered about marks (as long as I pass), I guess I'm ok. If you havent yet heard, there's no placement for this course. The only time your marks come in handy is when you decide to apply as an exchange student. I havent yet decided if I want to try for that, but you never know, stay flexible.
The ME professor seemed to have all but given up on us in terms of the actual papers, he knew that we had understood the fundas he taught us, just that we didnt write it down. So he gave us open book exams, and experimented with whether that'd help us apply better. The FinAcc professor must have thought that unfair, and to balance it out he gave us a pretty tough paper for our end term. It wasnt really difficult, lengthy was more like it... but if we had bothered to practice, then we wouldnt have had an issue. Note to self: Practice more. The Strategy prof was cool, open book exams (what would we have to mug and vomit anyway, everything needs to be applied!) and simple interesting cases. He even made sure that we had coffee and biscuits made available to us since his exams were 3-4 hours in duration!
The projects were simple, it was more of a challenge for our teams to get together than it was to actually work on the projects. We managed. I'll leave it at that. That's pretty much our first quarter. We had also had the opportunity of putting up the first fest of the PGSEM, Pehel '09. Hilarious! The things that went wrong, the things that we did impromptu... it was just an experience to go through. I'm sure we'll do better next time, that's one thing about our batch, we look to the future and stop worrying about the past...
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