The Start

We had our first class today. And contrary to whatever you might have been expecting, here I am, alive, healthy and without any assignments!! But ZERO on class participation :( (more on that later).

One of the reasons that ISB is good is the faculty that teaches here. They are very good. I know it still is early days, but I am confident I won't have to change my opinion. When your first MBA classes are taught by visiting faculty from Duke (finance) and Wharton (marketing) you cannot really complain. What really strikes, if you never have been educated outside India, is the pedagogy. The classroom is totally different from what we are used to in India.

Here we have professors constantly keeping the class engaged with loads of interesting discussions and real life anecdotes. Rarely referring to slides or fixed course materials. Add to that the colorful discussion initiated by the diverse bunch of students in the class and you could not have asked for more.

And this is where I digress from the good to the bad. Class participation. No doubt this is good and necessary. But this is just my personal views. Marketing has a lot of weight on class participation. So everyone makes it a point to have an opinion in class. The hands are always up. And the questions, comments and answers are always flying around. Whether they make sense or are in context of the ongoing discussion is another question altogether. This is what is called "arbit CP" in ISB (or perhaps B-school) jargon.

As of today, I am still to open my CP (or ACP) account. I have PA and DD for company and they were eqaully frustrated at the end of class today. And there are lot more. And there still are 9 classes to go. So hope is not yet lost. Waiting eagerly for the economics and statistics classes tomorrow. And what SD has to write about the econ class (here), it should be good fun!!

PS: I took my first dip in the pool today. It was fun getting into the swimming mode after a long time. Hope I can sustain today's enthusiasm :)