EuroTrip - Day 79

30th Nov - Monday

Mark this day in golden letters. It deserves the recognition. I spent almost the entire day doing studies. Yes, almost the ENTIRE DAY doing STUDIES. A rare and historical event of sort it is. There are three exams staring at our faces. So we don't have any option.

The day started with making a personal action plan to incorporate my learning from the course called "Positional Bargaining: Negotiation Workshop." An introspective account of my experience in last couple of months in that class. It was good. I am pretty sure I have done an honest work and tried to be creative too. Tomorrow, I will get to know the feedback from the class so hopefully there be a reality check.

The preparation for the course "Big Management Fads" followed. As the name sounds, the exam is also kind of fraud. Multiple choice multiple answers question from the things that were discussed in last 4 classes. It's an open book, open notes exam. However, I know I am not going to carry anything except my notes from the class (oh yea, I did make some notes here. 14 pages in total in my spiral notebook). A quick glance of the ppts (that the professor has readily shared) and the articles that were used as part of discussions and I was all set.

Last but most importantly, the group presentation for Marketing Strategy. We had a marathon meeting last Thursday and the group had almost finalized the ppt that was to be used in the presentation. Just a couple of big arguments to fix small details needed to be completed. And we did a group meeting for that. That too a group meeting in college (and not on skype). I just can not imagine me doing something like this in start of this term. But, I did go all the way to college to attend one meeting. And all we did in that meeting was to decide a theme that defined our team. It was a mendatory requirement for the presentation. Now that was disappointing, I had not come all the way to do just this. I had expected to see some discussions and arguments on the contents and design (did I tell you, we used a pink colored template) of the presentation. But all these group wanted to discuss what animal/song/line defines our team perfectly. And it just hit me. I don't know from where my creative (or not-so-creative) senses sprung into action and I threw blurted themes after theme. Sample this:

"They don't really care about us" - This is what our customers say about our firm and its products.
"E for Elephant.. oh no.. it is A for Ailment" - I wanted to call ourselves Elephant. haughty and really inflexible. We just could not take dynamic decisions. But Elephant starts with E and we wanted to make it beginning with A so we chose Ailment. Coz we could never identify the ailment that had made us suffer.
"Little moments of Joy" - We had reached 3rd position for a duration of one period and then our eternal fall started.
"Clueless" - We just did not have any clue of what was happening around us.

After a lot of crazy laughter and dirty looks, I settled for something less dramatic and came up with this lines from "The road not taken" by Robert Frost. It just fits our situation and the way we have behaved in this game. I am glad that the team appreciated it too and we have decided to call ourselves the team that took the road not taken. Here are the lines...

"I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference."

I guess I am all set to face the exams tomorrow. Wish me luck.