Batch 2011-13

I have been teaching for quite some years but the current first years took me by surprise. Their involvement in the class, their questions and curiosity surprised me. I am writing this after completing all my classes except presentations by the students.

Students usually pay attention and focus attentively on the subjects like Finance and Operation Management. The current students seem to focus on all subjects including OB, my only hope is that their interest in academics must continue till the end of their second year. It was a joy interacting with them and also trying to teach them something.

I was just wondering what may be the reason for this significant change in their approach to academics. May be the credit should go to the second year students for orienting them seriously, literally directing them to concentrate more on academics. The one more reason can be that 103 out of 180 in the current first years are introverts in personality type. Usually, so far, among the management students of our institute, extroverts outnumbered introverts in every batch. Only this year the ratio has remarkably changed. Most of the top corporate leaders in India – Ratan Tata, Mukesh Ambani, Narayana Murthi, Aditya Birla, Azim …- appear to be introverts. So finally we can hope to get top CEOs from this batch.

But it is too early to make any statistical conclusion. We need to wait till they complete the course and need to wait to see how they perform in the corporate. May be someone should do the longitudinal study on students.

But one warning for the current students:

The desire to take risk is a sign of courage and the spirit of adventure. But suicidal attempts can’t be equated with the risk taking tendency. What they must pay attention is that breaking rules certainly gives kick, and makes them look cool among friends, but one out of fifty if not twenty will get trapped eventually. Believe me; you may have neither guts nor desire to pay the price, because you will end up paying for all the mistakes committed by all people.

This academic year, we also have one new species called HRM Students. Their energy level is the highest. They are sharply focused, looks like they as a collective body determined to prove a point. Their enthusiasm sometimes frightens me. If they keep alive their current interest, we will end up producing hardcore HR professionals.

I am yet to take classes for RM students, I will comment on them when the opportunity arises.