No pain no gain

Not referring to the type of pain which the Delhi'ites felt in the past couple of days & Bangaloreans & Gujjus in the recent past during blasts, but this blog is dedicated to sweet pain, felt mostly by students especially those in IIT Madras of all IIT's and specially those in M.B.A & Civil Departments.

Students selected in IITM do not realize that their worst nightmare is yet to come. They feel quite excited after a few days of joining. Reason: tradition of welcoming students is the only thing which is best here, need not comment about the rest. Anyway, new excited students start feeling the miserable heat and start losing interest in lousy Chennai within a few weeks of joining and the glow on their face is about to disappear, but wait.................

It is at this opportune moment that the grand entry of the most hated phenomenon in human history called "pain" creeps in, almost unnoticed in the beginning but nevertheless makes no mistake in creating a big impact on the already confused minds.

Here is a brief excerpt from what can be expected out of a course in a subject called "consumer behaviour" in Management dept. Its so brief that you will feel pain just by reading the excerpt.

Please note that while the instructor will make every effort to adhere to the above schedule, it is not cast in stone and there may be some fine-tuning as we go along. However, what is cast in stone and is absolutely sacrosanct are the due dates for the group activities. Please make a note of the dates in your diaries.

Please make a note of the following points:

1. The workload in this course will not be light. Slackers, this is not the course for you!
2. Please be on time. Punctuality is a highly required virtue and it is best that you practise this from now. Latecomers will not be allowed to class. The instructor will be really strict in this regard.
3. Attendance will be taken. Latecomers will not be allowed to class. They will lose attendance. Anyone clocking below 75% attendance will have to face the bureaucratic wrath of the IIT system. The instructor is serious in this regard.
4. Likewise, the instructor strongly urges students to pay attention in class and avoid communication of any sort (like talking or even passing notes) between themselves. It is extremely rude to talk in class since it disturbs others and the instructor too. The instructor will again come down hard on such undesirable behaviour.
5. You must be present on the day of the assignments. Else, a dim view of the matter will be taken. If your group is presenting and you are not present, you will be marked zero for that particular assignment.
6. You will be divided into groups for the assignments. In his prior experience with students in groups (not just in India, but abroad too), the instructor has observed the phenomenon called social loafing i.e. some students doing all the work and some others “sacking out” and doing nothing/little; finally both sets of students get awarded the same marks. This is a patently unfair situation and to avoid this, this instructor will administer a peer evaluation form. In other words, you will evaluate your other group members in terms of his contribution to the assignment. Likewise, all your other group members will evaluate your contribution. The instructor will make use of this data to assign marks to students. Social loafers, be warned, there ain’t no free lunch.
7. Assignments have to be submitted within 10 minutes of the beginning of the class on the scheduled days. Assignments submitted late will be penalised very heavily – 25 marks (out of 100) will be deducted for a late submission within 1 day after the scheduled day of submission. Students who submit more than one day late will not be marked. They will get a zero for that particular assignment. A late submission is defined as a report that is submitted 10 minutes after class begins. The instructor is a stickler for punctuality and timely submission and hates excuses like “Sir, there was a printer problem and my friend is right now printing in the lab”.
8. The instructor will not accept e-mail attachments. The number of viruses floating around makes this a risky proposition. Therefore, assignment reports have to be on hard copy.

Hats off to the Prof Bob!! (Can't mention real name here, for obvious reasons) .Really, if there was a remote chance of me being a Prof, I would not have thought of such wonderful ideas to kill a dead cow.

But friends, finally it all boils down to the famous saying "No pain, no gain", I believe that this saying is true only if the Prof(the true author of the above excerpt) is ready to recommend the students of the course for a job in say McKinsey or Microsoft or etc big guns, otherwise it is nothing but a national waste and pain for nothing but down the drain.