Exams suck...

Have I mentioned lately how much I hate exams? Ever since we started the MBA in September, we seem to have a never ending flow of exams - surprise tests, mid-terms, finals and the cycle repeats itself all over again. I wish IESE just said "Alright, you're good enough, here's your MBA!"

Plus 6 papers over 3 days make me really cranky. We had Capital Markets and Economics today, good thing being neither of them were 3 hrs long. Being half credit courses, the exam only lasted for 1.5 and 2.5 hours respectively.

Due tomorrow is Cost Accounting (shudder - I'm actually blogging just so I can postpone studying) and HRM. Day after: Operations Management (another shudder) and Marketing.

You know how captured spies endure torture by focussing on completely unrelated things to take their mind off the pain. I'm focussing on the Karaoke night on Friday and Sunday's barbecue @ Stefan's. This too shall pass.

Snowballing!!

Things are going at a break-neck speed of late. Ever since the Multi Culti, we've had, among other usual parties and BOWs (Bar of the Week), the Reverse Random Dinner (which is the opposite of what happens in the first term, where 1st year students get randomly invited to 2nd year students' places for dinner) and the Spring Fling (where students from most european B-schools come to Barcelona to compete against each other).

I'll skip the details, but please check back other students' blogs, there're some pretty fascinating stories making rounds!

Right now, its 2240h, and I need to take my clothes out of the washing machine, do the numbers for tomorrow's Operations Management case (Levi's, for those interested), and re-read the marketing case (Marvel Comics) - not to mention my ongoing fight against drowsiness induced by my cold medication. It's gonna be a long night.

p.s. Is it a coincidence that I'm listening to Everybody's Changing by Keane - "..try to stay awake and remember my name.."??

Mid-Terms, SkIESE

My 3 readers will have hopefully noticed the lack of posts on this blog of late.
Reason 1: Mid-terms.
I don't believe it was about 3 posts ago that I mentioned the end of term 1, and here I am blogging about the mid-terms already. Anyone can tell you that four papers spread over 2 days is not a good idea. At the end of the day, I was ready to punch someone in the face. Thankfully a freak accident just before the Operations Management exam on day 2 (that I will desist from mentioning as I'm unaware of the age of some of my readers - mail me about this!) had me in splits for the rest of the day.

Reason 2: SkIESE.
As has been the tradition here at IESE, some 200 of us first and second years headed to Andorra for the annual ski trip, aptly called SkIESE. Now snow or no snow, when 200 people head out to 1 place, you know you're gonna have fun. Thankfully for us, it snowed, so all the ski enthusiasts got what they were praying for.

Unfortunately, some beginners (such as yours truly) did more falling than skiing - I had no clue that there were so many ways to fall, and I'm happy to have gotten away with jelly legs, a sore back, and what looks suspiciously like a cracked thumb. Others may not have been as lucky. Needless to say, pics will follow.

Negotiations galore

As days go by, I'm starting to love the second term more and more. It's difficult as hell (with 3 finance courses!) but this is what I came to do the MBA for. Even the most pessimistic of my classmates feel that we're actually learning something of value. Of course it helps that all the professors we have had so far are fantastic. This might sound like a sales pitch, but a) you've got to see it to believe it, and b) No, IESE isn't paying me to say this stuff.

Anyways, this friday, like all fridays, we had 2 continuous classes of negotiations, where we did the exact same exercise that I remembered reading on Noelle's blog exactly a year ago. The class was divided into 2 sections, and our team had to bid for product prices in a competitive market against the other team. We did beautifully - our team decided to take a fall by upping the price, so as to signal to our competitor (which was in another room, and consisted of people from our class itself, but we had no inkling who they were) that we wanted to collaborate and not start a price war.

Our competitors got the idea, and despite tremendous temptations (in the form of multiplying your profits 8 times - and I almost fell for it too, only pausing to listen to the rationale of my team members and maintaining my sanity) both teams, in a non-communicative way (even when we had to send a team rep to speak to the rep from the other team, our respective reps wisely chose not to speak about the prices at all), stuck to the unsaid agreement, as both our respective teams ended up with the most profits in the entire class.

Two things that struck me. One, the success of any venture depends largely on the intelligence that you and the entity that you are dealing with display. Had our competitor not gotten the hint, we would have spiralled into a price war, cutting profits for both of us. Second, I saw teams in my class react the exact same way Noelle had mentioned - that even though some team reps shook hands on a particular price, they failed to get the backing of their teams, thus changing the agreed prices, and resulting in some very un-diplomatic language in the class. It's funny how similar some things remain even when they are so different.

News in shorts (no, I'm not wearing them)

1. Term 1 is out, Term 2 is in. We received the results for the courses in Term 1 and I'm happy to inform my 3 readers that I got straight Bs in everything - including the courses for which I had a C in the mid-terms. Term 2 is another story. We take 8 (you read that right.. EIGHT) courses this term, not 6. And that's not including Spanish. I'm happy to be taking the D.I.E.N (the exam that qualifies one to be able to take some courses in Spanish) at the end of the month.

2. Courses in Term 2:
Operational Finance
Human Resource Management
Managerial Accounting
Capital Markets
Negotiations
Marketing, Planning and Implementation.
Markets and Managers
Operations Management

Spanish

3. Interviews for the summer internships are in full swing (especially IB and Consulting).

4. In Campus News, the Responsible Business Club finally got what they've been rooting for, for so long - a water fountain! Goodbye 400 bottles of plastic per day! A big thank you to Pradeep and the boys!