First Three Days

First Three Days

Ok so after a disasterous first day I promised myself that I would make it better. I lost my wallet but day 2 onwards its Keshari who has grown more paranoid :). Thanks to Himanshu, a local acquaintance we found a place for ourselves. Its just okay kindof a place, not too good and not bad for our short stay of 45 days. Its cheap which means we can redirect the funds to spending on trip. It also means we travel on metro to school everyday :(

Anyways, so the first day in IE was more of orientation and a gourmet lunch. So I had all kinds of feelings in entering world's 6th rank b-school. How does our IIM weigh against this school yada yada. First experience was I must say... good. Not out of the world but good. Its very systematic out here and more pseude in our terms.... They had our ID cards printed, course material ready. They gave us a fancy IE bag with notepad, pen and everyting. The bag is proving to be very useful for us. And we met two IIMA guys (one of them lost his laptop bag on the same metro station where I lost my wallet 2 days back), few from NUS, one from Tuck School in US, few from South Korea, China, France, Spain, UK etc. It was nice interacting with them all.

Then we moved to a park near Puerta de Alcalá and sat on the grass to have lunch. Lunch vas very tasty. We took veg lunch (wasn't sure what would be there in non veg). However it did have Tuna fish and Egg. Keshari realized that Tuna is a fish after consuming it and deeming it tasty. Anyways it was nice.... Then we said bbye to everyone and fixed ourselves a monthly metro ticket with the help of Himanshu (who knows some spanish). They sell tickets at Estanco Tabacas (which is a tobacco outlet controlled by govt).

Second day was hectic, we had 4 classes... Our schedule is crazy as we are finishing everything off in 45 days. The class on retail strategy was taken by prof Daniel Corsten, he also teaches at Wharton, LBS, INSEAD etc. and I was thrilled at this opportunity. He was awesome. But having said that, I realized profs at IIM Calcutta are no less. It gave me a feelingthat all of us should go out on exchange to realize that our profs indeed are one of the best not only in India but world over.

All my courses are globe courses and in most of them theres 50% marks for CP. Huh!!! Something I am not very accustomed to at IIM. But then it anyways doesn't do me any good to do well here as only pass is mandatory for me. I just have to ensure that I don't get a C+. Fair enough.

Right now I am sitting in a Computer Center between two classes. Had 6 classes today. The craziest schedule I have ever had. But.... Nothing tow orry about. I will have my share of fun too, that too powerpacked...

Cheers

~More in Next post

~Will sure post some pics in next post. Settling down in a big city wasn't easy atleast for a small town kid like me