16/03/2015

14/03/2015; 14:33:

It’s been one interesting week! And, it’s now Saturday!
Thursday, which is supposed to be our ‘weekly off’, was by far the most hectic day of this week.

We have a course on ‘World Politics’, this term. The first class was held on Monday. The professor has done his PhD in China Studies, while living in China as a cultural exchange student! McDonalds was on campus, in the evening- with an array of burgers on offer. I think a weekly schedule has almost been fixed- some retailer or the other is on campus, on any given day of the week. I shall try and curate a consolidated list of this; it shall be one useful list. The Finance and Investment Club held the first session of their promised Financial Discussion Forum on Monday evening at around 7 p.m.- the session sought to throw light on the world of finance- no prior knowledge of finance or investment was necessary to benefit from the session. We then played Volleyball.
Our session schedules unfortunately would not allow us to participate in Spree- BITS Goa’s sports fest that was due to begin on 12th March. We thus spent Monday night making random phone calls, looking for an alternate sports fest to attend, on a later date.
10th March (Tuesday) was Rang Panchami- the 5th day after Holi. Rang Panchami is celebrated in a big way, in and around Indore; we however had a normal working day- replete with a Game Theory Quiz in addition to a few classes. Things like Game Theory and Nash Equilibrium feel like part of our daily lives, rather than like some abstract concepts that only some people know of, and, that’s awesome. Royal Sandwich was on campus, on Tuesday, with an array of sandwiches on offer. An assignment as part of the course on Social Media was to be submitted on Thursday. Tuesday night was thus spent typing out said assignment.
The IPM SAC meanwhile is trying to create a consolidated list of the achievements of the IPM students. Xpress-o-mat – the new student-driven laundry service began operations on Wednesday evening! Washing machines, dryers, laundry bags, detergents and more have been procured for the same- a room in SR-05 is now ‘Xpress-o-mat’. It looks rather useful- drop off your clothes- they shall be washed, dried and folded, all in a matter of 2 hours! We now have two laundry services on campus- the other, existing one is here, for now. Perhaps, they might choose to merge, at a later date. BKC foods was on campus, on Wednesday with fish fry, veg rolls and chicken popcorn on offer. I like their fish fry.
We spent some time with Prarthana Ma’am, the institute counsellor, working on a project that is a Psychological Well-Being Circle- from what I understand, it will be more of a psychology-related discussion forum than a well-being circle. We designed a flyer, in order to let everyone know of the idea. We set off to Indore city, to get the flyers printed, and managed to get back to campus without the flyers, but with full stomachs instead. We sat down later in the night, working on the aforementioned assignment. It rained almost all through the night!

12th March- Thursday began with our weekly trip to nearby government schools as part of the i-Help initiative. It was a nice cool morning, thanks to the rain; once back, a couple of us huddled together in my room, talking. The topic very soon turned to ghost stories. In the process of this discussion, it was revealed that the New Auditorium is haunted- multiple people have apparently heard a woman’s shrill yelling at various points in time.
I then had a Skype interview with Greenpeace. As part of the course curriculum, we are required to do a social internship at the end of the third year. The placement process for the social internships is thus in full swing. A couple of people have already received offer letters from various NGO’s and CSR-wings- some chose to select candidates entirely on the basis of their résumés, some asked for written pre-processes, still others shall do phone/Skype interviews. I remember seeing some PGP guys roaming around wearing a shirt-tie-blazer and boxer shorts- all of it makes sense now- Skype Interviews! My interview was rather short, 7-8 minutes at most-most other people had 20-25 minute interviews. We should hear from them in a while.
Later in the evening, there was a SAC-EC meeting- a meeting hadn’t been held in a while and there were a couple of things to be discussed- the most important being post-fest follow-up for Ranbhoomi. Low attendance in guest lectures was a topic of discussion. There’s also a proposal for an IIT – IIM FaceOff. We’re looking to having that soon!
Later in the night, at 11 p.m., to be precise, I made my way to the SR-17 common room. The selection procedure for the Atharv ’15 coordinators was due to begin soon! All the interested applicants were divided into 5 groups of roughly 7 members each. One group at a time made their way to the GD room, upstairs where Piyush & Pranav had a cleverly designed problem to drive a group-think! Meanwhile, we spoke to the other people, gauging their specific interests in the fest, their strengths, the flaws in Atharv ’14, the pros & the cons of everything and the expansion plans. This went on till about 3 a.m., post which we were back in the hostel.

16/03/2015; 00:17
Most of Saturday was spent in class; later in the evening, we had a very brief Media Comm. Meeting. Post the meeting, we spent some time with the PGP E-cell. They are planning an event in mid-August and needed a Media Team. The event aims to be a platform to allow for interaction between start-ups that need funding and venture capitalists who are looking for promising start-ups.
Most of Sunday was morning/afternoon and evening was spent sleeping! Looking forward to classes on Monday.. or not!