I don’t know if this makes any sense to those who are not studying the course I am studying. Haha, I dont care (its my websites). Yes I do care (almost all the visitors are not my classmates)… blah blah… (and the argument continues…)

Please ignore these instructions: Read the following text very slowly because the sentences are forbidding, jumbled, tricky and excessively long and it would help if you could break the words into individual syllabi (but how would that help?), but of course, don’t blame me if you cannot understand what I wrote, I already said that they are meaningless. (Recall all the stuff they told us about being nice to people who use English as second language). Here we go (I don’t really know what this phrase means, but I like it):

I spent over a day sucking up the immeasurable amount of data in the ‘Skills for Leadership and Governance’ portal (the devilish course I am going to talk about). I trust the professor expects us to input into our brains as much information as we can, so that, in the future when braced with an ‘Oh my god, what should I do now!’ kinda situation, the angelic re-framing techniques would appear and relieve our suffering. I have a degree in engineering (and so far that seems to work against everything here), and we engineers (wink) are used to a straightforward method of addressing things. So, in spite of having a hundred possible ways of absorbing data into the brain, this stuff simply declined to enter. Aargh! I hate disobedient children (wait a minute, what are children doing here? (maybe it’s a ‘metaphor’? (oh I am over using the brackets (stop! Stop!)))) (see, all brackets closed dutifully (yeah I am so systematic)). Ok back to what I was talking about (there are so many distractions in this world, really!).

So, I start thinking about the stuff I just read on the website. Don’t be surprised, I am allowed to think (its called freedom of thought, or something). I was trying to apply those techniques to my [tag]personal case[/tag], but they won’t fit. Of course they won’t fit directly into situations! We are MBA students and we cannot expect to be spoon fed (although that would have been nice). These techniques are supposed to be ‘applied’ to the problem and not ‘substituted’ (as if the problem was a math equation). So I analyze further, and further, and further…. Eureka! (Hey stop picturing me naked) I found some stuff I can relate to (Ok now start picturing me dance around the room). No sooner than I found this, I started feeling funny. Initially I thought that the clock has malfunctioned (cheap electronics goods – is it Chinese?) but it was really 3AM and I still had to cook dinner. Indeed, by breaking regular habits, we DO find solutions.

Now comes the most difficult part – putting it down on paper. And, in English. Oh God help me, (I suddenly remember the smiling ladies in ‘learn English is 30 days’ type advertisements in Indian papers. I should have gone there instead of coming to Canada. What’s with the MBA anyway?? (ok we are diverting from the topic)). So I spent the next few hours hammering at my keyboard (it’s a feather hammer, don’t worry). Soon, it was almost 5 AM and that reminded me of the things preached by ancient scholars and sages – “Wake up early and study”. Wow! I feel enlightened already (hey could you check if there’s a halo behind my head?). Such are the joys of mental masturbation.

PS: Mental Masturbation is a slang term for engaging in intellectually stimulating conservation with little or no apparent practical purpose. The phrase is often associated with academics who engage in discourse that many people find uninteresting or irrelevant.

¶ Blogged by Priyank Thatte | Tags: MBA, Personal, University