72 Hours to Placement Season! Whats Cooking up?

Even I have started to visit the library, as I need to get some gnyaan on Marketing.


After Nihit did his internship at Fashion Networks, he seems to have learnt to
pose like a model

Akash Vaze, seems to be sunk in the wave of the Sensex crashing, and is keeping track of what stocks to sell and buy.

Swaminathan, seems to be making last ditch efforts to collect more xerox copies of notes,while also simultaneously slogging out as part of the admission comittee.

Jaideep Chanda generally doesnt make sense, when he reads a book, as he gives me hot competition to doze off, but since moolah is at stake, JD is all about Brands, and would love to sell himself as the self proclaimed progeny of Kotler.

Karthikeyan, seems to be pissed about something, as he chats with friends over careers in the Financial domain

Pravar Saxena, seems more bothered about hefty biceps and abs, as a method to cool off before placements

Sudhir has his goals for corporate life, LOUD and CLEAR!

Prakritish, generally a Travel/Audio/Movies freak, has changed for the call of the moolah.

Talk about Yuppy Onsite Dreams to USA!

Shweta Reddy dozing over business news!

Shweta Reddy trying her best to come over dozing at the Library. Funny antics a’int it?

Rahul and Prachi at 2 in the morning! , and some people never get tired!

Midnight Birthday bashes. Sometimes it pains the heart that such a tasty cake finds its way all over the body except the stomach, when cake smashing happens. I for sure did feel that way

What a way to welcome a person into his 2nd quarter of existence?

Thats what a person gets for playing pichkari at the boys giving the birthday bumps

Mobbed and Chocolated all over! A pity that he was reading Consumer Behaviour, a while before this happened. He could do nothing to stop the mob behaviour .

If somebody gives too much Gnyaan especially when one is tense, his fate is sealed! Kota discovers the hard way

Birthday Cake all over Rishikesh Sinha, as Anubhav seems consoling him, to leave the last bit of Chocolate cake for him.

Abhishek Rai and Himanshu Pahuja, exchanging pleasantries! (errrr…..!!!!)

Vibhor, with the ruins of the “cake battle”. His glasses were quashed in the mad cake melee

So Thats it for now. I have quite a few companies lined up on various slots, plus a music show to attend, and cram whatever time is left for some studies. Actually pretty Jam packed week, but quite an important one. Keep clued on to the blog, to see many behind the scenes sneak previews.

Reported by the Veeranam Times Syndicate!

T.N.Seshan Joins Great Lakes as a Permanent Faculty

T N Seshan, the fiery former election commissioner of India, has joined Great Lakes Institute of Management, Chennai as a full time faculty. He took his introductory class on January 21.Mr. Seshan shall be teaching a course on Leadership at Great Lakes called Leadership, Influence and Managing power from February.  

The 10th Chief Election Commissioner of India, T.N. Seshan served in office between December 1990 and December 1996. Born in Tirunelveli in Tamil Nadu, he is known for his introduction of many electoral reforms and his uprightness. Prior to his stint as the CEC, he served as the Director, Ministry of Atomic Energy; Joint Secretary, Ministry of Space; Secretary, Department of Agriculture; Government of Tamil Nadu; Member (Personnel), Oil & Natural Gas Commission(ONGC), Additional Secretary, Ministry of Space, Cabinet Secretary and many other posts.

During his stint as the CEC, he came in confrontation with many politicians because of his strong desire to ensure free and fair elections in many parts of the country. He contested for the post of President of India in 1997, where he lost to K.R. Narayanan. He was awarded the Magsaysay Award for Government Service in 1996.
He has been active even after retirement, founding the Deshbhakt Trust, an NGO devoted to social reforms in India. 

The founder dean of Great Lakes Dr. Bala Balachandran was present at the occasion of Mr Sheshan’s introductory lecture.  

At Great Lakes there was a palpable excitement among students and all of them were looking forward for the course to formally begin. The introductory class was listened to with rapt attention. A transcript of the lecture would be put shortly.

130 Hours to Placements

This is that time of the year, that every one has been waiting for. The mercenary part of the MBA shows itself up. Every one is immersed in his/her own world, imagining numbers and fat perks and great profiles. Some are thinking of the loan to be paid back, while some are willing to compromise their ego’s in getting a better profile, by having a lower salary. There are others who have their ego’s as their benchmark for salaries, while some eye all the locations of the target company, other than India. I remember when Infy BPO came for the pre placement talks, I was curious about what domain operates out of Mauritius, and pat came a stern looking reply that it was their Disaster Recovery centre..tch tch…not an MBA job at a disaster recovery centre.

I am not too cued in on going abroad, but woudlnt mind, if I have assignments on Honolulu or Jamaica. I guess I am the only one cooling my heels and playing Cricket 2007, when I time off from placecom work, as all others immerse themselves in putting on a serious/studious make up for a week to blow the socks of interviewers. 129  hours to placement week, as I write this post, so the countdown begins. I will be taking some sneak preview pictures this week, to record the placement week blues

Time To Loosen Up!

Loosen Up!

Midnight binges of finance books and discussions on derivatives, seem to dominate one set of classrooms, while the other class rooms have smaller group giving the last minute touches for the assignments in ERP, while the HR students seem to be involved in some activity, as the class room floor is strewn with straws and origami designs. It seems like a battlefield that is active at all times, except between 6 am and 7 am, when silence prevails as students use this time to head back to the rooms and get some rest. The last few days have been tense, running from one assignment to the other, burning the midnight oil for the finishing touches to the CGPA’s before the placement season starts. Hunger and sleep seem to be my main issues, as too many cases and promises stack up. I feel like a over worked battery that has lost the enjoyment in the MBA program.

I just rewound life over the past 3 years . I was dyslexic to coding at Infy, and after 14 months of confidence taking a beating, I decided to quit Infy and join a job that allowed me to breathe. Sulekha seemed the right panacea, but at as time wore on, the enjoyment in the job was slowly getting lesser, due to some politics played by some higher mandarins of power. I battled on challenging myself parallely with CAT and GMAT preparation and finally reached a stage when I again reached a stage where I wanted to breathe again. CAT and GMAT didnt go as well as I wanted it.

I got a new lease of life with an employment in Delhi, but that was shortlived as the Great Lakes MBA call came along after the Otto Beishem admit fell through due to visa delays in a student schengen visa. April to January, I have run this race and discovered some great friends, some free loaders, some brainy nuts and in the process have observed like a passenger observes for hours at a station, with trains one by one passing him, to the extent that he doesnt even remember which train passes, but just remembers that the chillness of the air, when the train passed was an experience to cherish.

Now Cases and assignments dont really get me started all up. I have taken in too many things and am just waiting for a break, but as soon as I get a one day break, the feeling of guilt breakes through, as some case/assignment would lie staring at me. Nor have I got peace nor have the assignments got my attention fully.

There is a sense of tension in the air, as the mind is mentally prepared to adjust to the workload that the excel file instructs to complete, and sometimes a sense of resignation too. For the past 2 days, I had taken some long walks around the campus area into saidapet, with the music on, and that seemed to have cooled my frayed nerves. Frankly that’s the best part of the 24 hours that I look forward to thinking about a make believe world, with the songs buzzing in the ear, as I walk along…. thinking about what I want to do about my life.

Life poses many questions with many unfinished ambitions and desires, all of which takes a back seat, during the mad-helter-skelter life at B school. Am I working more hard to get more of this in the years to come? Sometimes when I ask myself this question, I go numb, as the more I work at things that dont exactly give me time to breathe, I go claustrophobic and the small break becomes the whole object of reward for the work, which ultimately affects the work and the break. I spend the whole day wondering why some crazy bunch of CEO’s took some path breaking decisions, and suggest ways to break the problem, by some obscure imaginative reasoning, but when the same applies to decisions in my life I just freeze.

What decisions you may ask? Its like a fight between ego, fame, ambitions and the risk factors and the monetary factors. Newer factors get added….to add to the confusion, when life presents with you with too many options. Strange isnt it? You come to the MBA program to have more options and when you have more options in life, it leads to even more chaos when it comes to choosing. I anyway take decisions based on gut feel in the end, after worrying days over it, so I guess nothing new this time around.

Just feel better penning my frustrations. I guess all this would be laughed at when I take a look at this post 2 years later. Thats life… you keep progressing from one state to another, but the catch is that the problems increase in magnitude too . So that pretty much means I have to loosen up for the final leg of this 1 year race. I am 75% complete with the MBA….

Kartik Kannan

The opinions expressed are the authors personal opinions and in no way represents the opinion of Great Lakes Institute of Management

Brand India Shines at Great Lakes – Business World

Year 2007 ends with conferences and seminars at Great Lakes Institute of Management, Chennai

Great Lakes ended the year on a positive note with two international conferences – Great Lakes – NASMEI (North American Society for Marketing Education in India ) and Yale – Great Lakes 2nd International Conference.

Marketing Conference sponsored by Kotler – Srinavasan Chair of Marketing brought together some of the best marketing academicians from across the globe. The same was inaugrated by Veenu Srinivasan, Co Chair Great Lakes NASMEI Conference and Professor at Stanford University.

Yale – Great Lakes went on to conduct the 2nd international Research seminar on Brand India with Academicians, People from Industry and students from across boundaries getting together to promote “India”.

Both conferences are covered by Business World – http://www.businessworld.in/content/view/3312/3408