Kyunki Professor Bhi Kabhi Student Thi...

Disclaimer: This post is meant to be read on a lighter note and in no way meant to disrespect the professor. Project Management Finance (PMF) was a course definitely with immense learning opportunities and the experiences shared by the professor were truly helpful. Special thanks to Vaishali for helping me out with the idea for this blog. (Don't be amused...After all one has to save his bacon...)

The very first mail from the professor didn't augur well for our "so far so good life" in the Vth term. It had all the ominous signs of miserable time we will be having in next coming days. That very moment I was wondering what made me opt for this elective. Somehow we managed to complete our first submissions just before the class but the surprise quiz in the very first class was a very clear & loud message from the prof "Welcome to PMF and Screw you!!" Only relief was that being an adjunct faculty, she will be away for next few days. I reckon she also realized the same else why would she blatantly mention in the course outline "Freedom till my next visit..."

Entire term we were bombarded with 2-3 cases for each session and she ensured that none of those HBS cases was less than 25 pages of reading. Obviously the guys who didn't opt for PMF chuckled at us. And the irony was that her husband who happened to take our MACR course was coolest prof we ever came across. Yes the opposites do attract and it happened when both of 'em met at IIM Ahmedabad. Probably he took the onus on himself to negate the PMF workload by making us write group quizzes & if you have +ve IQ, you would have guessed it right that I was a free-rider in MACR quizzes.

PMF end-term exam was the last nail in the coffin which at least to me seemed like humanly impossible paper to crack (a little less ambitious word would be "to complete") in 3 hours. How a poor guy like me with crawling reading speed is supposed to read a 25 page case in an exam and then solve the case?? Only good thing about that exam was that PMF was getting over. The angel (of course the MACR prof) again came to our rescue to alleviate the painful PMF experience. And how does he do it?? By making MACR an open laptop exam!!

I still haven't been able to gather why did the professor made us keep our noses to the grindstones in the second year. It is supposed to be a chill year with ample of time to sleep, play cricket & sleep again. Isn't it?? One can only assume that she was also made to toil hard by her professors (screw you...you IIMA profs). Thats why they say "Kyunki Professor Bhi Kabhi Student Thi..."