21st June 2011 – Longest day of the year 2011

21st June is generally the longest day of the year (am sure you know this). Now, incidentally, this day was also marked the starting of the orientation week for PGDM batch (2011-2013) @ IMT-G. Nice to see that from the day one, we are witnessing full utilization of natural resources (days are bigger, so more interaction, hence more presentations can be covered).Fantastic time management and scheduling.

And it did turned out to be the longest. Not at all a surprise.

The day started with formal dressing and polishing the shoes. It is mandatory in B-school to be in formals on occasions like these. 9 am sharp, we entered the IMT library.The students of PGDM batch (2011-2013) were all dazzling and ready to listen and so were the speeches.

The director’s messageon ‘IMT Vision and Future Directions’ was superbly encouraging and the Nataraja‘s ‘creation by destruction’ analogy was philosophically refreshing. Before lunch sessions included addresses by Prof. Rajat Gera, Chairperson – PGDM (F/T), whose talk had enough subtle humour to tickle the audience. There were other talks also on various topics like Code of Conduct, etc.

Post lunch, we had sessions intro from all academic departments. Marketing was interactive, Finance had humour, HR had promising questions, IT looked familiar, ESS was new, while Operations was an engineer’s delight (caution: perception can go wrong).

The best was saved for last – Address by Chief Guest (Mr. Atul Karwal). He was the first IPS officer to climb Mt. Everest. His intro seemed to one of a of an adventure genius – sky-diving, scuba-diving, mountaineering, horse-riding, black-belt @ Martial Arts, etc. His presentation was simple, powerful, inspirational, moving in parts and literally had thatkhatra (fear) factor. His presentation included lots of self-taken pics and motivating videos of persons who successfully touched the summit @ Mt. Everest. Plus the insights he gave of the climb was very imaginative. Not to leave behind the learnings, which were most important.
Apart from his experience of Everest, he also mentioned some unique adventures of his daughters (snake catching and then lizard catching to feed those snakes).He deserved a standing ovation; he got twice.

Post dinner, various committees presented themselves. PLACECOM was most popular, ALCOM gave a comfy feel, MESSCOM generated humour, IRC was unique while SIFE was something very new.

Clock has touched 12. Next day, will be covered in next article.

best quote heard over the campus on 21st June 2011 -
“Let us not play a dot ball” ~ Dr. S.K.Batra [awesome reception to this]

Cheers
Ag

ps: 21st June being the longest day of the year, also means less hours allotted to night, which means less sleep.