Start of term 2

After all the insightful details on how one should have the right kind of momentum to enter a term and be ready to manage one's time well that I wrote about in my previous post, I ended up being royally unprepared for term 2. I had a lot of time during fall break, unlike a lot of my friends who were busy trotting the country, and sadly enough, I seemed like one of the most taken aback by the first week of the new term.

Believe me, first day of a new term is no different from any other day and it hits you so bad that you can't help thinking that someone just hit the pause button on this crazy video and resumed! Term 2 started with a bang... and what a bang at that! Marketing, Finance and Accounting, all started in full speed, and by full speed, I mean full speed. I haven't seen anything like this before. Finance and Accounting had a set of pre-course CD that you had to prepare from, and guess what; All the basics you will probably ever need in those courses are in those CDs and if you don't do them well (or do them well but don't really 'get' it), you are in for a fun ride.

I remember coming back one day from classes and thinking: "These guys are ought to be crazy! Or if not crazy, really not bothered about what we learn in school. Maybe it's all about the money! No one really cares how much you learn because the pace at which the courses are going, you can't really learn anything!" This wasn't even panicking because I knew I wasn't the only one with this problem. I was sure everyone was in the same boat and since we have relative grading, it doesn't really matter. Fuqua students, collectively as a group, are not learning anything! And if Fuqua students (you know, being such good ones from a top school and all) are not learning anything, maybe all business school students everywhere in the world are not really learning anything! Wat a minute, I'm onto something here... Business leaders, being as smart as they are, have found the perfect answer. Don't really teach or learn anything and we can all have fun and make a lot of money in the process. Hmm... 'Interesting!', I thought. Maybe running a business wasn't really about skill anyway. All the stories of Bill Gates, Lou Gerstner or Richard Branson were after all really based on their being geniuses... And maybe they had a little bit of luck to help them along. So the entire thing is just a cosmic coincidence between you being a born genius and luck helping you a little. It's a conspiracy! Could that be true?!

As I took up the books to start studying just to confirm or dis-confirm my revolutionary (and to-be-kept-a-secret-from-the-world) theory, I found that it wasn't really the case. (Sigh! There goes another one of my revolutionary theories) As a matter of fact, you do learn if you give it some time. However, for a second, it gave me the scare of a lifetime! I guess I will cover the learning aspect in a separate blog. Some of these courses are (yawn!) some of the most boring ones.

I have not really been partying much this term like the last one. I ended the fall term with a mild fever and a cold that has stuck to me since that time, and in fact, as I write this, I do have a mild fever. Believe me, one thing you really don't want to do when you are here is get sick. It just doesn't work! If you fall behind even by a day or two, you would have to catch up so much that you would either fall sick again or start theorizing crazy stuff like I did above!

Anyway, I just dropped in to say a couple of words since I haven't posted anything for some time, and now I'll get some sleep. I have an accounting quiz tomorrow and I don't want to go in there with a fever! Yawnnn...