Induction Week at Great Lakes(GLIM)

Friends,
I didnt get enough time to make a writeup.So kindly adjust.Well,college started on April 21st and we did not have much events except for giving the college our orginal certificates and other formalities.So not much of intro or general exchanges happened on the first day. I share a few credits of the following writeup to Prashanth and Harshil, from whom I fetched few lines.

April 22nd
We had our formal induction at tidel park auditorium which was graced by Uncle bala(well, we are supposed to call him like that and we love to call it that way.. ),DR. S. Krishnamoorthy(former chairman of SAIL,Maruti, Ministry of trade and commerce.. blah blah..), Dr.Mallika Srinivasan( DIRECTOR,TAFE) and Ms. Mangalam Srinivasan (Associate, Harvard University, US). It saw the launch of a new initiative by GLIM called as SWIM(successful women in mangement) where Mrs. Mallika is expected to head it from front. we had a series of advices and lectures on the same day and uncle bala i must say immediately got into the act and i must confess that he is brilliant in conveying his point and keeping up the crowd in rapt attention. he has got an amazing sense of humour and conveying management fundas using the simplest of terms.

April 23rd and 24th

We had a series of lectures by some eminent personalities in the business arena,the most prominent of them being the CEO and Founder of MaFoi consulting Mr. Pandiarajan. There were other lectures on Systems thinking,Personal mastery,Marketing basics and HR basics. these lectures were there to make us aquainted as to what is B-school education. Some were really good and others were really heavy . anyways it helped us in knowing what was in store for us once the courses started.

April 25th and 26th

The best part of the learning so far. We had an Fun oriented Outdoor learning (FOOL ) programme conducted at MGM beach resorts for all the batch.

The main objectives of the program were the following:


To ensure that all the students are well acquainted with each other, they lose their inhibitions and the concept of classmates as family members is internalized by all participants.

To unleash the latent talents in people, by giving them a platform to perform.

To introduce key management concepts like, teamwork, leadership and time-management in an innovative & practical way. Also to make sure people have fun during the program.

Experience:


The program was extremely well designed and perfectly executed. Everybody had a tremendous amount of fun and learning. Everybody was richer through this experience because they made new friends and realized some very key insights about important concepts like, friendship, teamwork, leadership and most importantly we realized we are limited by our perceived limitations but in reality we can achieve more than

We think if we try.


Listed below are some of the best activities undertaken by us.

Trekking: This trek unlike normal treks was based on teamwork. All of us were divided into five teams of 7-8 members each. There were certain constraints applied to each team these were: two people were to pretend that they were blind, other two people were to pretend they were dumb, finally two other people were to pretend they were deaf. This was a unique experience which brought out the trust aspect of a team because it is very difficult to navigate the mountains unless you trust your teammates completely. Moreover many of us thought they could not undertake the trek before they started the trek but they surprised themselves with the ease with which they completed it. This reinforces the concept of stretch; that is we can stretch further than we think we can.

Jam Bottle:The objective of this game was to fish out a Jam bottle from a set of concentric squares. This was to be done maximum number of times in twenty minutes. There were certain constraints imposed such that this had to be done by the means of given tools; these were two ropes, a bunch of rubber bands and two reels of tapes. Further more neither of the tools or a person should touch the periphery or the interior of the outer rope. In the event that this occurred there was a penalty of 100 points. The points for the successful attempt were calculated by the following formula (20- time from the beginning when attempt was made)*100 this game fostered lateral thinking and team work and was a great learning experience

Skit: We were divided into five different teams and each member was asked to pick up a chit from a box, each chit consisted of a character, and the chit-bearer had to assume that character and the team had to enact a play based on the given characters. This was very challenging and required on spot creativity and teamwork. It was fantastic fun and it gave us insight into fundamental concepts in management such as dealing with sudden change as sometimes characters were introduced at the last minute when storyline was set.

Besides the above games there were some other fantastic games, time on the beach, a short capsule on Salsa Dance, Yoga lessons, Karaoke, and dance to English, Tamil and Hindi songs. It was an amazing experience and amazing is an understatement.

Perhaps the most crucial part was getting to know our batch mates well and getting a sneak preview of the amazing diversity and talent in class. This was best demonstrated by the last exercise of the day in which we were asked to complement our batch mates on their qualities; it was a complete riot with people rushing to complement each other. We had amazing fun. trust me you have to be there to believe it. the salsa and jive dance were brilliant. the professional DJ's on the discotheque made dancing on the dance floor during 24th and 25th really enjoyable.

But as they say there is no such thing as free lunch our two day utopia came to an end and we returned backon 26th night.

April 27th

This was the convocation day and we had it in Taj coromandel. The function was presided by Uncle bala as usual who looked majestic in his robe and wearing the distinguished Kelloggs professor medal.The chief guests for the function were Jamshyd Godrej (MD and CEO,
Godrej companies) and Dennis connors (CEO, 3COM, USA.). All the seniors wearing the customary coat and graduating hat looked Splendid. there was an air of royalty in their attire as well as the way in which uncle bala and the guests occupied the dias. the background score was simply brilliant and was defly an symbol of class . after the awarding of degrees and other awards the way the students threw up their hats in mid air was a treat to watch . i just couldn't believe that in a year's time i too would be doing the same. after that as usual we had a sumptuous lunch. Yeah, the food was brilliant.

Now since i have given details about various activities lemme give data abt college. well the college is just one year old and comprises of a single building in saidapet. the entire building is wi fi enabled and has a decent library with an extensive e-library and journo collection. the computer lab is pretty fast and thats why i am typing all the above points from here. The canteen is pretty decent.

Student Profile of Great Lakes-2006 batch:

The class has 130 ppl with 113 experienced ppl and 17 freshers. 102 guyz and 28 gurlz a pretty low female populace ..i do agree but with lesser fresher intake that is bound to happen.

The average work ex (inclusive of freshers) is 3.8 years next only to that of ISB in india. So the class composition is brilliant for a 1 year old school and i expect it to get even better in the coming years. we have at least 50-60 % of ppl from other parts of India(leaving out tamil nadu) which makes for a multi varied diverse background. 50 % engineers and 50 % non engineers.



Few Star profiles of the class

One guy with 5+ years of work ex in US working for NASA projects.
3 CA chaps.
4 merchant navy guys with 4-5 years of work ex.
One guy with 20 years of work ex holding pos'n of CEO in an Danish company.
Three 7+ year work ex guyz from US.
One project manager from a major indian IT company with 10+ years of experience.
One IIT chap with 17 years of work ex who was the Asia-Pacific operations Head of Woolmark.

More amd more is gonna follow.. WAit and watch... It is not even two weeks since the college started.. and we got the schedule for the first term exams.. as one term is 5 weeks here at Great Lakes (GLIM). Gotta go.. :)