Let me clarify at the very outset that this article has no connection with Irwing Wallace, and infact it is not even remotely connected to his piece (those interested may actually go for the rather modern adaptation by Paulo Coelho). Seven minutes is the approximate time that it used to take me to walk through a rather interesting path from my college till the T-point that hit the main road, which then lent itself to the shady by-lanes of Katwaria Sarai. In the vicinity of at least 5 B-Schools, it is not surprising that the area was flooded with students all the time, and is precisely where I spent the last 2 years of being an MBA student!
I say interesting because of the fact that there have been countless instances when you are supposed to come prepared in class with some presentation, some article, some assignment….and what do you do??? You just put in tonnes of hard work……and only when you are sweating to the point that girls stop entering the TT (table tennis- the author’s passion) room saying “Oh My God!! Is there a dead rat in here or whattt!!!” do you leave the crazy room and sleep yourself off to glory; oblivious to the surprises that God (& the Professor) has in store for you the very next morning. Your roommates kick your backside in the morning and somehow throw you out for the class. The dead rats are taken care of thanks to the ‘Axe Effect’ but what about the case/presentation/assignment….that is when one realizes the worth of those seven minutes.....
While the MBA course is said to be a mixture of diverse minds (well in India that is seldom the scene- I had 70% engineers in my batch and most of them used to think alike), I realized that this ‘seven minute’ thread tied most of us together. Everybody had their own seven minutes, my roomie used to have his while eating his daily staple diet - a banana....some may have had it during answering the nature’s call, while some (and only a few) may have had theirs while taking a bath, multitasking by singing ‘Waka Waka...This time for Africa’ (with the passion which would make you wonder whether they would substitute Torrez in the next match, or if they are currently dating Shakira).
For those with other professional paths, the golden question is- “What happens during these seven minutes?” It actually depends on a lot of parameters, some of which I am listing down below:
- What is the current status of my attendance in that subject? (This is the 1st thing any MBA student would calculate, and believe me when I say that we are the most optimistic creatures- our analysis always creates the feeling that we are better off than what we really are). So bunking is our 1st choice for the course of action, a rather evasive one. Only when we are certain that it is not an option do we consider other things.
- Who is the Professor of the subject? (The subject in itself doesn’t matter to us, as we believe in practical learning anyways....it is always the professor that we think of) Our imagination on this parameter at times lends us to the professor’s wife as well- What if she didn’t treat the professor well enough.....What consequences would such an event have had on his mood in class today?
- How lengthy was the assignment/presentation? (Well, chances are very high that hours spent in alcohol last night would kept us aloof in this aspect, so I always recommend do have a couple of friends in each class- because they will save your ass during such testing circumstances). That is because if your ‘friend’ tells you it isn’t that long, you start arranging for a pen and a paper (yeah, we don’t start off with such things)....have another 'friend' ready for the same!
- If it is an exam or an individual assignment for which we can be embarrassed amongst the more learned ones in class, we analyze if our cellphone has its battery charged? (if not, we try charging in those crucial seven minutes), does it have atleast a 1.3 megapixel camera? (picture resolution is the key to take effective pictures of the relevant book contents), hoping that we did not abuse our neighboring roll number students last night under the influence of alcohol.....All this is done to make sure we have all resources ready for what the world calls ‘Cheating' or 'Farre' in local language and what we call ‘Helping the Needy.’
- The cool dudes amongst us take the ‘Be Indifferent, Be different’ path...Their analysis tells them that they would be indifferent to whatever lashing the Prof would shell out.....they are too good to work (‘Workkkkkk......thats not what we are born for....gimme a breakkk!!!’ kinda’ attitude)....These humble human beings are wannabe cool dudes who would impress the chicas (if any) of the class... (well, at some point or the other, we all are guilty of doing it!
- The last option depends on our guts and all the other factors mentioned above....The “Lets have some fun” option. This is exercised to break the monotonous routine of MBA education. When it comes to this, the seven minutes are spent on thinking about the weirdest excuse anybody could ever think of.....the intention here is not to sound funny, but to irritate the Prof, so that he throws you out of the class and you are back to playing the dead rat for those 90 minutes. We don’t even consider the option of thinking of a reasonably genuine sounding excuse ('Aaaaarghhhh, thats for school kiddos, gimme another breakkkk!').
If I have shaken your belief to ever consider an option of doing an MBA, there is some respite......we do have 1% students who would be right on the button.....never floundering on any time schedules, you can call them the ‘A+ Guys’ (but please don’t call them Geeks...after all, this is the 1% that constitutes the ‘Friend’ for the rest 99%). And these guys have their seven minutes too (or multiples), mostly while commuting to college, just like me.....but the difference being that whereas my mind used to be occupied analyzing the above mentioned options, the ‘A+ Guys’ would utilize it what they called ‘Revising’....flipping sheets of paper all over the place!
The MBA experience is just like Life....growing by learning....each such episode lets us play with the options the next time, tuning our brains to attempt coming up with better choices, but the base remains the same! The intention of writing this piece was to remind my friends of those fascinating 2 years of our lives which brought us all together....for cherishing those ‘seven minutes’ which we now call sweet memories part of our past.
P.S.: I apologise for the continuous transition of the tenses in the article. I started writing this when I was still pursuing the MBA programme, and I just tried to maintain originality at some places. What gave me the inspiration to complete the article are similar experiences in my current Sales job, which just hints that Life is a full circle.....the characters have changed- the Professor has been substituted by my Manager, and my ‘Friends’ by my ‘Colleagues’....time to create more memories!!!
