Random Ranting
13th December 2010
So I have been staring at that equation for over 1 hour now. It looks something like this ...see below. It's really not that tough you know. But thats besides the point. Point is that I have been staring at it for over an hour.
Health Economics - Disease dynamics
Sometimes you get that realisation. A thought, a voice from inside that tells you - बस यार , बहुत हो गया . Time to move on. Whom are you fooling. You can do it no more.
Not because you can't. Because you don't want to.
You have 2 exams in 2 days. There is loads and loads of stuff to read. Loads to understand. So much more knowledge to gain! Well ....maybe but it doesnt excite you anymore. You're in Switzerland(on academic exchange). You keep staring at snow flakes falling under the street lights outside your window. You think about your ex-girlfriend whose just broken up with you. Then you forget her. Then you check facebook. Then you chat on gmail. You're drowned in Coldplay which you had played on to well..er..help you focus. Just makes you more dreamy.Then you read some nice economist article. Then you check cricinfo.com. Then you think about your Umang days (Umang = my undergrad college festival) .Then you stare at the equation for 10 mins. Then again look outside the window. Then you see whats in the fridge. Then you think how the black hole must be. Then you think of Barcelona :-) Then you think maybe you should start your venture soon.Maybe you should experiment to know if someone would like to give you a job......... This keeps happening till you see the clock and another hour has passed. Time for a scheduled break? :P
You're actually like this kid who keeps playing with different toys till he gets bored of them all.
Actually, now that I look back I have spent my entire IIM stint like this. I have just spent days dreaming. All my books look unused. If they do look used its only because I slept while attempting to read them and my body had been crumpling them all night. You know its that stage where you have not read 80% of your stuff and you plan to get up at 6 am to do something before you go for a 8.45 am exam. Alarms keep ringing and you keep hitting the snooze button. Finally you get up at 8 am. Start listening to Coke Studio songs. At 8.15 am you decide marginal utility of having breakfast is greater. So you go in there unprepared. And you bank upon god, lenient checking and stuff like that. I don't even remember names of so many courses I have written exams for. Unfortunately, because of me people on my campus think commerce/business students are dumb and engineers are supreme (where as actually its the other way round, I can prove it)
Point is I know nothing really. No regression, no levering of betas, no monte carlo simulation, nothing much beyond 4Ps of marketing (or maybe 7),no porter type models, no portfolio mgmt models....I know nothing. I dont want to know anything. I mean the point is....Whats the point?
So you ask yourself. Is it mental laziness? Is it distraction or simply stupidity? Oh come on you can't be so dumb! (Afterall you managed a 99.7%ile meaning you were apparently in the top 800 students out of 250,000 odd who wrote the entrance test). They say there is no discipline in your life. You are too distracted. When will you learn to focus ? Well the thing is...I don't really care.
You see you were not always like this. When you were in high school/college getting good grades mattered. Being considered as intelligent by women mattered. Having qualifications against your name mattered. Winning academic accolades mattered. Impressing your favorite professor mattered. Having a good resume mattered. There was a time when quest for knowledge was insatiable. You wanted to get to the bottom of everything. Now... you just yawn at the thought of these things.
Inner voice says this - There's just so much more interesting stuff outside. So much to do in the real world. Such beautiful people to meet. So much to learn about people and their psyche.So many more friendships to be developed. So much love to be given and received.So many sports to be tried. So many mistakes to be made. So many places to travel. So many photographs to be taken.So many cultures to be explored. So much money to be made.So many dreams to be realized.
Basically, enough of intellectual masturbation. Its time for the real thing .....
- Ankit Doshi
(The author finished his 1st year at IIM on rank 169/241. Will finish around 160 by the end of 2 years and will be relieved to just graduate. It will make his parents very happy.)