My first(and hopefully the only!) night without end at IIM-A

The last 23 hours were hectic. Starting with a 45min Corporate Finance Quiz(yesterday at 2:30pm, thankfully a sitter) and culminating with 3(yes, you read that right, THREE) group assignments due today, things were pretty rushed. Being infected with the SHIT(Somehow in time) mentality typical to engineering students, I started my allocated group work of poster making at 7pm. And boy, did I regret it. While the analysis part was finished by 10pm, the xerox shops did not cooperate by staying open for providing that A3 print. So till 10am today, I was on tenterhooks whether we would be able to print that poster for which so much effort had been expended in power point smart shapes, colour combos etc. Luckily, a low tech alternative(chart paper + sketchpens+ colour printouts) saved the day and resulted in a pretty decent looking chart. Kudos to my group mates for rolling their sleeves up and working with glue, scissors and sketchpens to salvage it.

But maybe I'm getting too ahead of myself. While another groupmate and me were working on the poster yesterday, the others were busy on the remaining 2 reports. One report was a slim 8 pager while the other was a mammoth 24page report PLUS presentation(which was made today itself). Technically, I could have slept at 10pm itself but when everyone around you is working hard, and you know that your help may be needed on a group assignment, you just manage to stay awake. So in between intermittent spells of sleep, I some how stayed awake to help edit another report. And luckily! Sleep deprivation had begun to take its toll on some group mates(less so on me) and I could spot some editing errors before submitting the final draft. My work closed at 7am, at which time I headed out to the local Amul parlour to gorge on a butterscotch cone.

I guess staying awake was from a personal standpoint, unnecessary. But for the other group members working on a submission, the knowledge that someone else is 'there for you', can be quite comforting, even if they do not have occasion to use the extra help. Of course, these were the last 3 study group assignments, so they ended with a bang. I'll miss the fun, cribbing, moral suasion and other aspects of group work, but thats for a different post.