11 reasons to attend college

So what are the subjects that one learns in the first semester at Bajaj? We have 3-hour classes, with a small break after one and a half hours. Since a majority of our faculty is external, schedules are determined at the last minute, and one usually gets tomorrow’s schedule, tonight. So if you went over to your friend’s house in the suburbs to watch an El Classico overnight, too bad. These are our subjects:

  1. Managerial Economics: In my naiveté, I thought economics classes would be like something straight out of Freakonomics, where our professor would draw correlations between seemingly unrelated factors and say ‘Ha! DID you know that?!’ Instead he draws a lot of complex graphs and while he’s a great teacher, you sometimes feel things are more difficult than they actually are. Still, I love the subject, and the prof’s allowed us to write our term paper on the Indian liquor industry, so no hard feelings.
  2. Business Statistics: Our teacher is a paragon of uninterrupted lecturing. She has taught us relentlessly for over 50 hours, of which I was fighting off sleep for at least 20. It’s not too hard a subject actually, once you understand which method is required to solve a given question. But if you’re weak at probability you need to pull up your socks. I could tell you more, but that’s all I remember. I think the rest of the portion was completed in those 20 hours. Damn.
  3. Marketing Management: Seeing as I want to major in marketing, I was looking forward to this class. Both our teachers are very genial. We were made to carry out market surveys, we were given HBR articles to read, and were taught how to make a marketing plan. An impromptu competition was held for the same. It’s a fun subject that I look forward to every week.
  4. Operations Management: Man do I love operations. Of all the subjects, this is where you see things happening tangibly in front of you. Both of our professors for this subject are amazing. There’s a variety of topics, mainly to do with efficiency of course. To give you some perspective, we used the examples of the Normandy D-Day landings and Mossad’s Entebbe operation to learn planning. So there.
  5. Corporate Social Responsibility: A test of your will and patience. That’s all I’ll say.
  6. Financial Accounting: Journal something something ledger something more balance sheet and P&L statements and OH GOD WE ARE FAILING THIS SUBJECT.
  7. Organizational Behaviour: A subject on company and people dynamics. Not exactly a cliffhanger, but then where would we be without such subjects?
  8. Communication Skills: Nicest of all the subjects. The teacher is very engaging, and the activities fun. We were made to do book reviews, letter writing (again, yes) and taught about body language and listening skills. Basically I’ve loved English as a subject throughout my school life so my opinion of this class might be a bit biased. But rest assured you won’t be breaking a sweat in Communication Skills.
  9. Sales and Negotiations: The professor really made this subject interesting for us. Playful, speaking almost exclusively in double meaning, he carried our class along with him. Selling skills, listening skills and all and sundry were covered in this subject.
  10. Perspective Management: An interesting subject on the features and characteristics of management. Full of industry examples and anecdotes. I found myself paying rapt attention in this class for all the examples and hitherto unheard stories.
  11. IT in Management:  I honestly don’t know what happens here. I used to bring a book to read in this class. All I can tell you is thanks to ITM, I finished three travelogues by Bill Bryson (excellent, I highly recommend), Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity, and Devdutt Pattanaik’s retelling of the Mahabharata, called Jaya. So all in all, a great subject.

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