A Saturday in the life of a future manager

“Have a bounce in your step” she barked. “Either that or you will have to march and reach your position.”

“Where am I?” This question was hammering my head like a battering ram. I had signed up for an MBA program, never in my living memory had I ever thought that theatre was a part of such a program.

“Be loud when you speak, be very clear”, that voice again. I gave up all thoughts of intro or retrospection. With her shouting, I could barely form a coherent thought process. My limited intelligence was just not tuned to handle all the myriad emotions and thoughts (very violent ones) running through my head.

I looked around at my classmates. Some where positively enjoying this … or was it a cover? Others were positively disgusted. The rest had that look which said “lets just get over with it.”

As the first group tried to follow her orders and perform, the web guru of the college started recording the progress. I looked at him in dismay. “Why did he have to record our pathetic performances? Wasn’t the verbal assault of our teacher enough on a Saturday morning?”

“Not the right attitude dude” a small defiant voice inside me jostled. “You are a future manager take it in your stride.” This defiant voice was the reason I kept attending all the classes required for the course while giving up the beautiful morning sleep. How I wish I found a way to shut this voice. “It would be over soon” another voice, this was one of my classmates and somehow even he was not convinced of this statement.

Immediate future was not bright either. “Coming up next” was Strategic management. Yeah! The course title was heavy and attractive. The classes were only heavy. Depending on the topic of discussion in the class, I could be found in one of the following states – daydreaming, Yawning and half asleep. Any other state change happened only when a quiz was expected.

The course seeks to ask relevant strategic questions and apply models like 5 forces, value chain etc. What a waste, when guys like me wanted questions from models like Deepika padukone. Why can’t colleges teach this?

Finally, I somehow managed to pass the class in half asleep state, but, as they say ‘Its not over, till its over’. COG was there to accost me next. The course was almost at an end but most of the class had not been able to figure out who exactly were “They people”. It was a class where the R’s turned to L’s (maybe Shahid kapoor should try this next) and the only way to stay awake was munching on biscuits.

So here was a Saturday in the life of a future manager. At times I shudder to think of the future… when I will be a manager.