Snap back to reality So this was the final term and things started with a bang. I used the term break to go on a trip to Rajasthan.This was my first proper ISB trip. I’m a complete laggard in this matter . A lot people travelled the surrounding hillscapes like there’s no tomorrow, before placements and much more after placements. I loved campus a bit too much and didn’t want the (apparent) hassle of travelling . Rajasthan was warm and fun. It was a new experience visiting forts and palaces, seeing old weapons and finding out that the Rajas smoked a lot of hash! A Desert Safari and tent stays in Jaisalmer were fun too . The warm(er) weather was good break from the chills of Mohali. And soon I was back.

On the academic front things were as cool as they could be. Over-loading on courses earlier meant that I had to study only 3 courses and had plenty of time for socialising, fun and … co-ordinating my marriage! My courses for Term 8 were ENVC (Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital), MFIN (Micro-Finance) and MKAN (Marketing Analytics). ENVC was about the world of startups and venture capital. It was taught by Professor Francis Kim who is a former (successful!) entrepreneur and covered both sides of the table; we learned how to value a startup company and also about what kind of ideas succeed and what it takes to be an entrepreneur . The most amazing (and useful) part of the course was the simulation. Many academic courses use a simulation to show you how markets evolve, and how a manager has to respond . These are usually computer-based simulations, so they don’t feel all that real. In ENVC, the professor divided the class into 24 teams, 8 of these were VCs and 16 were ENs (entrepreneurs) . All the entrepreneurs competed in the same market (“Edtech in India”). Every class entrepreneurs would present to VCs and half of them would get eliminated . Watching the simulation progress and observing the economic + human dynamics play out was a real treat. Initially, all but a few teams had over-lapping ideas . As rounds progressed and teams observed who died/survived, they started learning from each other and incorporating each others ideas. Every VC had 15 sticks to invest . As expected from economics, one team (mine! 😉)got a disproportionate share of the total funding in accordance with a power law distribution. Politics played a huge role too! Many couples put themselves into complementary EN-VC pairs; so that they could support each other! People called upon friendships and other niceties to get funded; objective judgement RIP . It was a faithul simulation of the ugly truth that is human life.

MFIN was about a still emerging branch of the finance that deals with facilitating the development of the poor/not-so-well-off. Here are the core ideas: To make people well-off we want to give them income sources, the simplest of these is running a small business . To start that business requires some inputs/capital. These inputs are beyond the means of these folks (else they would’ve started these businesses already!) . So we can just lend money to these folks, right? Wrong. All of lending works on the idea of collateral, the poor being poor don’t have any collateral in the first place! All is not lost, this challenge has been confronted head-on by social entreprenuers, most notably Mohammad Yunus of Grameen Bank in Bangladesh and replicated in many countries world over . Their weapon of choice is group lending, where you start by lending to a group of people who keep each other from defaulting. Initial loans are small and grow with time . Because these banks can’t take the easy (and impersonal) way out when it comes to lending, banks like Grameen Bank have innovated on multiple fronts to make finance accessible to a whole new section of society . For example, repayment happens daily/weekly (as opposed to monthly) as this keeps the borrower engaged and aware of their loan. Loan repayment is a social process done in front of a group, thus adding social pressure to avoid shirking on a loan repayment; some wonderful uses of human psychology these are . Grameen Bank is the posterchild of the microlending/microfinance movement and a huge chunk of the economic and social development of Bangladesh has been attributed to it . An interesting concept I encountered was the double bottom–line (we measure only the financial impact of a business, business should also evaluate their social bottom-line and their impact on society) . The course was taught by Shamika Ravi, who is a fantastic teacher (and a member of the Prime Ministers Economic Advisory Council); I really felt like I was understanding the core economic concepts as their immediate applications throughout the class.

Finally there was MKAN. MKAN was using the now available glut of data to apply age-old marketing principles of Segment, Target, Position. We used the now classic tools of clustering, regression, etc to do everything from segment customers to predict sales . The course was a good blend of hands-on tool driving while keeping marketing principles in mind. The classes happened at 8 AM in the morning, and hence I scarcely have much to say about this course . That wraps up the acads front.

Offer letters started pouring in for a few people with proactive companies. The gym was finally a thing for me. Some attempts were made in a bid to get skinny before the wedding . The attempts weren’t very successful. However, I’m glad that I got rid of my unfamiliarity anxiety about the gym. One of my reasons for not going to the gym is that I just don’t know what to do there, fortunately the ISB gym has two full-time trainers available 24x7 to guide you . It was my first honest attempt at gyming after trying in the 11th standard, and I’m now comfortable doing basic weights and using the machines. ISL continued its march in March (shitty line, I know) . I remained blissfully ignorant.

Yearbook awkwardness continued. People scoured the land for places to get their yearbook photo clicked. Some people came with highly representative ones . It was also time to write yearbook testimonials for people. You had to nominate 3-4 of your friends to collectively write one testimonial for you. Here is where your true friends were revealed! This became just another group assignment with 1-2 people leading the charge for every testimonial.

CS and AoE sessions: A small segment of brave laptop warriors rekindled the joys of multiplayer games. And given the amount of free time available, a lot of kindling happened until the the wee hours of the night . I earnestly tried to join the fun by watching AoE tutorials, but then AoE on my PC kept crashing. And then I was like, why isn’t this in a browser?

SLC calendar

The Student Life Council went into beast mode, driving a ton of events on campus. These events covered everything from Food fetes (like a giant potluck) to SV wars (which was basically student housing buildings competing to see who can throw the best party). The Food fete really brought the campus together, with everyone either cooking or helping or eating! The dishes students cooked up turned out to be better than expected – not everyone is an amateur in the cooking domain! This period being a sort of end-of-days, for us all meant that people were extremely enthusiastic about partying. The winter had started relenting a little and spirits were uplifted.  SV wars and the usual birthday parties that happen on campus meant that there was a party every other day, but you couldn’t say no to the next party because this was the last time this would happen. Which brings us to the most epic party after all the other parties. Holi! The Holi was lit and was the best party I’ve attended in my life. The SLC provided gulal and pichkaris and a giant inflated swimming pool and a DJ and a raindance area . In addition, there was bhaang-laden thandai and bhaang-laden bhajias. It was a warm(er) day compared to others. People were excited and in good spirts, going about throwing colour on friends, enemies, everyone . Then throwing friends, enemies, everyone into the inflated swimming pool. Then dancing and losing their shit after having bhaang. The post-holi post-bhaang time warp in which I struggled to get back to my room and ended up bathing for what seemed like an eternity is something I will never forget.

This concluded formal student life on campus, … or did it? D-week The conclusion of ISB life happens through two events - one formal and one informal. The formal one is of course graduation day – the hat toss, the tassel turning, the address to the graduating students by the guest of honour, etc . The informal one, unique to ISB, is what we call D-week, short for De-orientation week, the evil twin of O-week, that happened at the start of the year . Feeling the need to make the final week of ISB life super-duper-ultra-goddamn fun, I joined the D-week team to plan some events.

The D-week happens after ISBs academic session has wrapped up i.e. after the last exam has been written and before the graduation ceremony. Students officially have nothing to do, which adds to the pressure of planning some nice long events . Obviously, students are also free to leave campus and travel around, so making the events awesome and crowd-pulling becomes a must.

This D-week we had a game night, a “hotbox” party, a stand-up performance along with a roast of the GSB, a sundowner party, paintball, sufi night, an awards night along with a prom (the last party). The last event was the distribution and signing of yearbooks. The events where I contributed to the most were the standup/roast and the awards night. I gave the longest standup performance of my life (and emerging comedic career), lasting more than 20 minutes. I cracked jokes on every aspect of ISB life and proceeded to crack a few general ones . The auditorium was FULL, as the entire batch had turned up. It was my honour (and pleasure) to entertain these folks laugh; they laughed, a lot, which was a very inspiring and proud moment for me . Fortunately, this time the performance was recorded (by multiple people!).

Me and a handful more folks planned the awards and content for the awards. The winners were decided by live public voting which made the event really fun; thus the winners were a surprise to us too . Lots of controversial awards were given out. To add to the fun, we played jingles related to every award when the winners came on stage, adding to the cheery vibe of the vibe of the evening.

All D-week events were accompanied by some party or the other. I didn’t partake much in the daily drinking, however I did partake hugely in the daily eating . It was such a tough choice between indulging in end-of-days hedonism & trying to get in shape for my wedding. Both sides had a strong case.

On the last day, students gathered in “The Hub”, a small lawn in front of our main building to collect and sign yearbooks. This was fun few hours, writing messages to each other and recollecting memories . With this informal student life at ended.

Graduation

Graduation was a moderately long drawn out affair. Over the course of two days, we had a rehearsal of the graduation, “The Deans Dinner”, the ISB award ceremony, the official graduation ceremony followed by the Deans lunch. For starters, it was complicated to wear graduation robes. While it’s fun to look like you’re in Harry Potter, wearing a gown is moderately difficult, especially the ISB gowns which have multiple moving parts . I’ve graduated before and it wasn’t so difficult :P. Also, ISB follows the tradition of turning the tassel - when you receive your degree, you turn your tassel from the right side of your hat (“mortarboard”) to the left indicating your successful graduation.

After the rehearsal we had the batch photo clicked followed quickly by the official ISB awards night. I am happy to state that I won awards for winning competitions, being a torchbearer (i.e contributing to student life + the brand of ISB) and finally also won a giant gold trophy for best club . Winning best club was thrilling to say the least. Just before the awards night could start, my Mom who was travelling all the way from Bombay arrived, coincidence? divine providence?

The awards night was followed by the Deans dinner where only the elite (like Deans listers, Club presidents, etc.) were invited. Yours truly was invited too, and he watched the awkwardness of socialising unfold for the umpteenth time. That was it for pre-events. As I had dinner that evening, it was with my mother instead of the usual coterie of friends/students, it really started to sink in that things were coming to a close, whether I was transformed or not, a whole year had passed by . A year quite different from those before it.

I dropped my mom off and wished her goodnight. Tomorrow was going to be a momentous day. Graduation day started early with breakfast opening at 7. Me being an eternal early bird, arrived promptly at 7. Then came the … waiting, students, who were all gown-ed up, waited in the academic block in a neat line so they could walk in a procession into the convocation hall . The convocation hall was a newly setup airplane hangar-like structure on the lawns. After a long wait that involved lots of photo sessions and false starts, some orchestral music was played and we all went into the hall in a glorious procession . An invocation was sung, our GSB president gave a speech followed by a few more addresses. We were told that our placements had been the best ever, and thus we were a great batch (Thanks!) . The guest of honour gave a really boring and uninspiring speech, lots of people slept off or got busy on their phones. This was followed by announcements of the best professor, best academic associate . Finally we came to the graduation, students were called on stage one by one, in alphabetical order, except for those who received any sort of ISB honours, they went on stage first . My row got up all together, I waited for my moment, my name was called, I walked towards the center of the stage, shook hands with everyone present, grabbed my degree, looked at the camera, smiled, click, and walked out . As I walked out, I remembered to turn my tassel and officially become a graduate. Ah! Long journey. Then I sat as the degree disbursal wrapped. Finally, we all stood up, did a royal hat toss, smiled, laughed, cheered and walked out of the hall as graduates together . It was a fun ceremony. Then there was my favourite part, lunch

Since I had a plane to catch from Delhi, for which I had to take a 4-5 hour cab ride, I was in a rush! There was sadly no time for pleasantries and ooh-aahing. I wrapped up all my exit formalities, packed my bags a proper and took one last look at ISB, a place and people that I did indeed feel a little fonder towards. This was the end. Of one sort. I had come here with few expectations, for me B-school was just a brand and a network, these benefits come to after you graduate, I thought (back then) that this was mostly not relevant, I just had to get through it. But I was in for a lot of surprises, mostly pleasant . Apart from discovering news branches of knowledge, made new friends and newer perspectives, headed a club, won competitions and honours (in a far cry from my undergraduate days), tried standup comedy, gotten a kickass job and more . It felt like an eventful and significant year had gone by.

The transition from student to alumnus is most stark when you turn in your student ID card and receive your new Alumni ID card, it is precisely when the feeling of “shit, it’s really over” sinks into you. I wasn’t too emotional as I left, I had come prepared for this end . Back in Bombay, when I was packing for ISB, I packed quite lightly knowing that this was just a year, a temporary stay; and I could also save myself a lot of effort in moving stuff around . My past self had seen my future self which was now my present self and done it a favour! Cool, right?

The fun wasn’t over. Members of the drama club got together and gave every student leaving the campus a proper tear-filled and emotional vidaai; while I left early and couldn’t get one, it was a very sweet gesture. But there was no time to be chill, my wedding and honeymoon were oncoming! And so ended #LifeAtISB