Monday, September 28, 2009

Idiot’s guide to understanding B-Schoolers



Disclaimer – Though I am going to write derogatory things about them mostly but don’t think I have something against them; some of my best friends are B-Schoolers. And please take it as joke and not canon.

Stereotyping is fool’s way to understand the world better.

As a B-Schooler for more than a year now and having the pleasure of seeing two B–Schools and having close friends in ten different B-Schools at this time I saw patterns emerging in students everywhere (real or imagined). So being a true blue B-Schooler myself I thought of stereotyping them or as they say in Management Jargon, segmenting them. I will begin now –

The Bongs & Maadus – These are mostly fresh B.Com graduates who have a flair for accounting and finance and quantifying everything as profit and loss. They understand the world in black & red, profit and loss, risk and return etc. They excel in all finance and accounting related subjects and talk passionately about the Stock Market, Mutual funds, M&As, Valuations and secretly or not so secretly nurse the ambition of becoming Investment Bankers. Most had good marks in graduation and not so good marks in school, are out of their home for the first time and are from business families. They are in a habit of bargaining and haggling over prices, half an hour spent in getting 5 Rs discount is pretty fruitful to them. While the Bongs love their smoke, drink, fish and porn the Maadus are teetotalers and have a poorly concealed porn obsession. Understandably they take finance as a specialization and consider all other subjects as ‘Global Gyaan’. They push the grades up in finance subjects and lower in other subjects. Most will either take plum finance jobs or return to their family business.

The IT Engineers – Bored and benched for the most part of their career they look towards MBA as a welcome break from the moribund life they were having. Without any real reason of doing MBA they often come with high hopes and are soon disillusioned when they find that there ‘third eye’ didn’t open. Soon they get in a habit of either criticizing the students or the professors or the entire system itself. Torn between the expectation of professors who look at their work-ex as knowledge mine and the reality that the most part of their work-ex was spent in either training, googling, looking for either on-site opportunities or applying for other jobs. Or perhaps sitting on the bench, drinking coffee or playing pool. They have good understanding of IT and IT systems but seldom show it due to their perpetual boredom. They are somewhere around the median both in the grades and salary.

The Lafanders or Lukhas – These are Junta from either from Delhi or Punjab/Haryana who are boisterous, loud and pretty vocal about their opinions and have no regards for other’s. Half of them have d in some DPS and swear by DU. To them Delhi/NCR is the whole world and never think beyond it. Considered arrogant, conceited and ‘not worthy of being in a B-School’ by the intellectuals and the pseudo-intellectuals in the class they upset them in GDs and Interviews with sheer confidence, verbiage and the ability to bluff and bluff convincingly. They love booze, women and a good party and girls surprisingly love them in return! They either stack up at the top of the pyramid or the bottom of it and mostly take off-campus jobs through their (dad’s) contacts.

The Uncles – People having more than 4 year’s work-ex. They find it tough to come to terms with getting back to college after so long and crib about relative grading, the immaturity of their classmates and policy of companies not to shortlist people having more than a certain months work-ex. Extremely hard-working but sometimes bit slow they either garner instantaneous respect or mocking. Most have a habit of explaining things like a teacher and preach a lot. Most of them exercise caution with booze but don’t be fooled, most of them were ‘Party Animals’ once.

The Marketing Mavens – The would be (atleast in their dreams) brand managers of 'Nike' or 'Piyush Pandeys' have a habit of going through STP (Segmenting, Targeting, Positioning) for everything. They swear by 'Kotler' and have by-hearted all of marketing jargon. They use terms like POD, value added, innovation, brand positioning, skimming in every other statement and come up with INCREDIBLE plans like rural marketing of Italian hand bags, giving more money to marketing for a better brand positioning of a bankrupt company and online advertising of a literacy campaign. They believe the root to all problems lie in a company not innovating timely and not strategizing enough. Loved by some professors for ‘thinking out of the box’ and hated by others for their total disconnect from reality they baffle some of their classmates (mostly the IT Engineers) and win the admiration of others (Maadus and Page 3s). They take the plum marketing jobs and shine through the presentations, reports preparations, GDs and most interviews.

The HumanistsHR is in their blood and they believe that people are the key to any company’s success or failure. Loved by the HR Professors and laughed at by their non HR inclined classmates they have carved out a niche for themselves. This group is mostly populated by Girls or Pansy errr…. ‘Sensitive' guys and they bond very well among themselves and frequent go out on trips, coffees and other group activities. They hate the numerical and financial subjects are single mindedly focused on HR subjects and have ambitions for working for NGOs. They are perceived by many as having the most comfortable life both in college and after it. They sail through the interviews and often take placements in big brand names and have fancy titles.

The Mavericks – Well nothing much to say about them. Nobody knows and understands why they ever came to a B-School; lacking in academics, the so called ‘Leadership Skills’, the desire to work hard and a worthwhile CV. People only sometimes see sparks of brilliance and stellar job which is soon forgotten. They have come here for personal reasons and have no desire for fat pay packages, big brand names or fancy titles. In this group lie the future entrepreneurs, though totally ignored by all now some of them turn into ‘Star Alumni’. They are like wild card entry in this game who occasionally upset the favorites.

The Womenfolk – The most difficult to decipher group among these all. They are above and beyond these simplistic attempts to classify B-Schoolers. Women are way above the mere mortals of a B-School and with women to men ratio ranging from 1-10 to 1-4 at the best, the obsession with women is, but natural. But here I am compelled to make one further classification among girls. Not committing the sacrilege of naming them I’ll just call them the Type A and the Type B. While the Type A is studious, sincere and always finishes at the top of the class the Type B is opposite who never have to worry about making presentations, working on reports and projects and still people step over each other to take them into their groups. While Type A has people rushing to them in exams to get tutored the Type B just have to smile at somebody to get everything home or atleast desk delivered. The Type A is here to make an identity in a man’s world and wish one day to break through the glass ceiling the Type B was born with everything, they are the Page 3s of college, everything from what they are wearing and hair style to their nail color is news in campus.

P.S- If you like this blog, post '1' in the comment section. If you want to give a suggestion, post '2' followed by your suggestion. If you don't agree with the views in this post and think the author is a moron, put your fingers in an electrical socket and switch it 'on' !

P.P.S - Original Idea taken from 'Joker in the Pack'

Thursday, September 17, 2009

Idiot’s Guide to understanding Online Behaviour




Before I begin let me make two things clear.

First there are people and then there are their online avatars. People behave quite differently when they are in the cyber world.

Second I have nothing against any of these, some of my best friends are amongst them.

The Chatanovas/Chaterellas – These people are the Casanovas / Cinderellas of the cyber world. They won’t even say ‘hi’ to you when you see them in person but they are ‘all words’ when online. They will ping you and start chatting which can only end when you excuse yourself. Normally at a loss of words face-to-face, they are quite witty and even flirting when chatting online.

The Cassandras – They are your friendly neighbour doomsday announcers. They feel it’s their responsibility to educate you of the health risk of mobile phones, beware you of AIDS needle stabbing people, the incredible way to alert police by entering your PIN in reverse etc. They are also the ones to stuff inspiring quotes like “Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm” down your throats. Whoa! Just lay off.

The Obscurist – These people are the ones who write status updates/message like – “I am very....”, “Today was very bad but thank god I....”, “Abhishek is very happy because....” or even worse like – “Da da da ....”, “Aaargh”, “My mind is MR”, “DD didn’t know she....". Please, you may think that you appear very enigmatic and deep by this but in reality you appear to be a moron who doesn’t know his right hand from your left. Either write what you meant to say or shut up. Nobody is interested.

The fad riders – They will write whatever is ‘IN’ right now. Like “Rest in peace King of pop”, “Well played Federer”, “Amazing race Raikkonen”. Even if they never heard MJ's songs or probably thought him as a child abusing psycho they think his death should be put into a status update. Please they are enough news sites on the web. If I wanna know I will read that and not your idiotic updates.

The attention seekers – They are full of sad stories about themselves. Mostly girls are the culprits in this case with status messages like – “I am very sad today :-(” “I am missing you very much :-(” “Bad day in office, I wanna go home” “Having a terrible head ache. It hurts”, “Waan” or the killer, just a “:-( “. Well I would have sympathised with you if you hadn’t splashed your plight all over the cyberspace. Now you are just looking for attention.

The Perennially busy-bees – These people always have a red dot next to their name and are always busy. Status messages include the plain and simple “busy” or the more exotic variations like “Busy busy busy”, “Do not disturb... Very very busy”, “Working, do not disturb under any circumstances”. Well, if you are SO busy then why the hell don’t you sign out ? It does not show that you have a life, just issues.

The cry-it-louds – These are active on social networking sites like Orkut and Facebook and feel it’s completely ok to tell the world things like – “Rohit was late again, he doesn’t love me” , “My sweety pie is here and I am going to kiss him”, “I miss my Jaanu”, “I love her so much but why she doesn’t love me”. Probably she doesn’t because of your ranting like these and total lack of sense that these things are private and meant to stay that way.

The serial-Frandshippers – Just because you sat near them in the bus means that you two are friends for life to them. These are the people who have above 500 “friends” and continuously troll the sites looking for anybody they recognize. Mostly IT engineers with no work and a free internet. They are also the ones who send out friend requests to random girls with pick-up lines – “Hey nice Pic. Can be we freinds?” or “Hi Aarti looking cute... Wanna have fraandships with me?” Uggghh... Creepy!

The blow-by-blowers – They tell it like it is. Courtesy mobile phones – “I am in a queue to see The Dark Knight. I am still in a queue. I am bored of being in a queue. I am wondering whether to give up being in a queue and go home. I have decided to go home. I am on the bus wondering if I should have stayed in the queue.” I wish you were under the bus rather than in it. B**w me !

The spreaders-of-love – These people feel it’s perfectly alright to spit out hate messages like – “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.”, "Anurag isn't really that impressed with idiots who don't realize how idiotic they are.", " Fucking assholes need to mind their fucking business”. Don’t curse the world here, seek psychiatric help.

The Careless Commentators – Ever found out that your last night –drunk- Salman Khan
imitating -shirtless photo has been uploaded on the SNS (Social Networking Site), and you face tagged, complete with a comment like – “LOL, he was so drunk”? They are to be blamed for this. They are also to be blamed (more appropriately drawn and quartered) for comments like – “Oh who is this hot chick with you in this pic?” or “Oh my god look at Shruti’s legs in this pic, they are yumm” Dude! If you can read this so can she! And public forum anyone?

The Bore-me-to-deaths – There is no dull moment for these people. Facts like “I am very sleepy”, “Today I ate 3 Muuli paranthas for lunch”, “in the evening planning to go to India Gate” seem like a must-know for everyone to them. They are probably trying to tell the world that they are still alive.

The lyricist – No explanation required. Probably the most harmless of the lot. They are the ones who keep their about me, status messages /status updates in the form of song’s lyrics. Retards!

English killers ‘Awesome. Super fucking cool. Amazing. Incredible. Sexy’. All of their sentences begin and end with these words only and they use LOL as a punctuation mark. English language has its shortcomings, please respect them.

Quiz takers – And my favourite. The useless quiz takers on Facebook. They want to know when will they die, what is the first letter of the name of their love, what kind of lover they are, what their birthday says about them, how much naughty are they and what is their love percentage. And they take Facebook as a perfectly credible source. In the end they also feel that world should know about this and publish it. I can only think of one solution. Death by firing squad !

Sane – And lastly the rare and dying breed, the normal people.

P.S. – The author although thinks he is part of the last group but there is plenty of evidence linking him with all of the above.

P.P.S - Stereotyping is a fool's way to understand the world better

P.P.P.S - By talking to people and looking in Retrospect I realized that I have left out one important case. The case of a Girl putting lyrics from a song or putting up a arbit quote from the web and the Guys going ga-ga over it. They 'like' it, and start pouring in comments like - "Oh how beautiful quote", "Hey nice quote", "Oh this is no nice. this really suits you", "Wow this is so touching" and then there'll be one guy who will think of this as an opportunity to start a conversation and put in "Hi Swati how are you". Guys ! Stop being so desperate.

COMING SOON - THE IDIOTS GUIDE TO UNDERSTANDING B-SCHOOLERS