The school

So this is the end of our first week of regular classes. Its a bright Friday late afternoon and I am sitting at the Fox Center, on a comfortable couch close to the glass walls. A lot of people are sitting around, doing their own stuff. Fox center is this pretty big 'student center' at the business school where students can sit around tables, have their meals, sit and pound away at their laptops and umm... generally do things like sit around and work on their blog.

As I sit here, the last 3 weeks seem like ages. I have not even explored the school building or the university as a whole. I am just not that kinda guy, you know. The classrooms are pretty impressive actually. Well you would expect a guy from India to say this right, but this is what makes it impressive: There are 71 students in one section and the class seems smaller than any of my previous schools, even though they had like 40 students max. As you would expect, I was a happy back bencher and could do whatever I wanted with the teacher standing a mile away! (I have done the sort of things that back benchers are typically proud of; let's not get into that ;-))

Here, there are only four rows! Not only are they staggered, but they also form a semi-circle around the prof. No back bench!! You just can't escape the prof! He or she is right there, looking at you. You know what is worse? They have these giant name cards that you have to put up right in front of you so the prof. can call you. And here is the biggest of them all: Class participation.

When I first heard that class participation counted towards your grade, my heart sank. So here is what I thought: You are throwing in a bunch of bschool students together (a-ha), and not just 5 or 10 of them but 70, in one room that has an environment that is virtually asking of them to open their mouth (coz. they feel so 'wanted' and visible in this staggered, semi-circle of a classroom that they just can't contain themselves!) and expect one poor man or woman to control them?? On top of that, you know what? You have to learn some pretty tough subjects also!

I thought we bschool students would probably be the most boisterous lot of people you can find and 70 of us together would be quite more than enough for anyone. But believe it or not, against all probability (forgive me, I am taking probability classes as of now), we seem to be moving along quite nicely! There are a couple of "gunners" (the friendly Fuqua term for the 'so full of themselves that they can't control raising their hands at least once in 5 minutes') in the class, but overall, its pretty impressive!

OK, it is a Friday today and there is something special about Fridays at Fuqua that I want you all to know. Its 6 PM right now and people have started crowding the Fox center for the 'Fuqua Friday'. Don't go by the name n all, its just a party with free beer! So before the beer and the pizzas vanish, I will make my way to the party and catch you guys later...