PGPX enters Columbia!!!

We went, we immersed and we got reported on. Check this out…
http://www.mbauniverse.com/innerPage.php?id=ne&pageId=715

The following are some of the faculty who taught us and interacted with us.
http://www0.gsb.columbia.edu/whoswho/bio.cfm?id=55663
https://www0.gsb.columbia.edu/whoswho/bio.cfm?UNI=gvj1
http://www0.gsb.columbia.edu/whoswho/bio.cfm?ID=97
http://www0.gsb.columbia.edu/whoswho/bio.cfm?ID=56269

Prof.Wadhwa’s lecture was the most fascinating and he hit one very close to home when he said – “Neurons that fire together, get wired together.” Harsh Thakkar…, we are going global buddy... MCC (Managing and Creating Creativity) and neurophysiology are going mainstream, all across the globe. Ohm……

Me and Sumantra, also did some research on behalf of some of our class mates, on the downside of not taking Advanced MCC in the 5th term, and this is what we came up with – “Morons that wire together get fired together…”. Don’t tell us that we didn’t warn you.

The role-plays in the negotiations class by Elke Weber, as we have come to expect from the PGPX batch, set the stage for some really tough negotiations, involving all sorts of action packed stuff like posturing, walk outs, hard balling tactics like good cop-bad cop etc. And the fact that some of these were practiced even without reading the case, paved the way for some really interesting arguments. Here is a sample – “I am the Vice president of this company. Why should I read the case?”

The marketing sessions by Gita Johar had cases about launching the Mini
http://harvardbusinessonline.hbsp.harvard.edu/b02/en/common/viewFileNavBean.jhtml

and about selecting an advertising campaign for Mountain Dew from a given set of story boards.
http://harvardbusinessonline.hbsp.harvard.edu/b02/en/free/product/503038/html_bundle/index.html

Both of these being multimedia cases, the case preparation involved watching advertisements and promotional materials, making it painfully close to watching TV, except that there was no break in-between for watching actual programs. When it came to class discussions, the biggest launch of the season was that of Uma as an ACP (Advertising CP) stalwart. She did so well here that there was even some carry-over effect that spilled into our Federal Reserve visit and Fixed Income classes. The rest of us also pitched in with some ACP (Arbit CP) of our own. All in all, to cut a short case even shorter, we did the Dew, thereby reserving exclusive rights to say – “Been there, done that” whenever we want, for the rest of our PGPX lives.

The “Fixed Income Markets” class by Suresh Sundaresan also went very well, especially considering the fact that most of us had only a ‘passing’ knowledge in finance. But the Prof through his unique pedagogy was able to involve each and every one of us in class discussions, in spite of our ‘sub-prime exposure’ to finance thereby boosting our nominal ‘interests’ and ended up delivering some solid ROI, within the short term ‘duration’ of the class.

The final event of the week was the memento presentation, which was done by yours truly as the representative of the batch, to Joshua Safier the director of Chazen Institute of International Business, who was the sponsor for our program.

Non-academic events also happened at full flow, dominated by the ‘Dhiraj Bakaya Reality tour’, led by Dhiraj himself, that took us through the nook and corners of downtown New York and Wall Street. As part of this tour, we saw the statue of Liberty from the back, Merrill Lynch bull from the front, Ground Zero from the side, New York Stock Exchange from down and Donald Trump and his daughter from front, back and side. Sorry, down would have been too risky. We got so close to Donald to even elicit a ‘You’re fired’, from him, but that was also because we tried to hand over the PGPX brochure to him and he was not in a terribly recruiting mood.

The guys n gals of our batch also showed some strange tendency to run over to the Times square, whenever they got some free ‘Times’, averaging almost close to two visits per day. In fact going around in Circles in Times Square turned out to be our favorite pastime and in hindsight all that added up to the good ‘Times’ that we had in NY. Deepavali was celebrated with candle lit beers, at Dhiraj’s sister’s place which again turned out to be not too far from the Times Square.

We also took some time off, to do some clubbing and partying which involved some surprise… surprise… more eating and drinking. This period of the ‘Big Apple Era’ was signified by the emergence of the Kabab brothers, the tall thin stick figures of PGPX - Ashish and Shafeeq. Their ardent desire to keep eating Middle Eastern cuisine over and over again got so out of control that we had to coin the names, ‘SHISH Kabab’ and ‘Sheeq Habeeb’ for them. Sorry guys, for being ‘Kabab mein Haddi’

And then there was all the salsa dancing that we did, and here the pictures do speak louder than words.

All in all, a pretty fun week that proved beyond any doubt that if you are looking to get internationally immersed, you can’t go wrong with the US. But then again nothing new here, as even Columbus knew this when he set out sail long back, all the while telling others that he is going to India….