http://srikanththunga.com/2007/xlri-impressions

From the blog of a current "junior"

xlri - impressions

Its been a month in Jamshedpur. Its feels as though I have spent almost 4 months here compared to the pace of life I had in blr/IT industry. I quit my work at i2 on May 11th. I had a month before I would leave for Jamshedpur. I spent that one month meeting people, saying goodbyes, having parties, family get togethers etc… Finally, I boarded the train from yesvantpur to jamshedpur on June 11th.

The train journey: I wasn’t able to get a 3AC ticket on the train and hence had to travel by sleeper coach. I met Bipin who was going to join the IR course on the train. We had met each other during the Bangalore freshers meet(which was really good.. met a lot of seniors and a few super seniors also). The train journey was horrible. There was another train derail because of which my train was delayed by more than 8 hours. Instead of reaching at 7pm on june 12th, I landed up in jamshedpur station at 3am on june 13th. Initially we were thinking of staying back in the station till dawn break as we weren’t sure about getting the room keys at that ungodly hour. We took an auto anyways and came to xlri campus at 330am in the morning. Bahadur, the most famous security guard on campus who can always be seen with a bunch of keys in his hand told us our room numbers. He also told us that our roomies had already taken the keys to our rooms. I land at my room to find a note by my roomie, Souvik saying that he is not in his room and to collect the keys from next door people. To my surprise, I find the next door neighbour, Srinivas playing some game on his computer at 4am. I collect the key from him and settle down.

I stay on the 4th floor of the oldest hostel on campus and I have a pretty good view from my window. The floor is above most of the trees on campus and is very airy. The first shock of the morning was sun rise at 5am!!!! The weather was really horrible for the first couple of days/weeks(from a bangalorean’s perspective. Sometimes, I find Bangalore’s weather horrible.). Its raining these days which is good but sometimes it becomes very humid after that which is horrible again.

Another shock was the lack of good coffee on campus

The first day went normally, meeting new people and others whom I had met in bangalore freshers meet etc… There are a lot of people with work ex, but mostly IT work ex. The preparatory classes started. The profs are really good, quite different from my engg experience. The only good place in town is called Bistupur which is more like Gandhi Bazaar of Bangalore. I went into town a couple of times. Its a small decent town. The preparatory classes were good. There weren’t many new things to be learnt other than the basics of accounting. The preparatory part also had films on the history of tatas and jamshedpur.

There are other good initiatives on campus like senior-junior mentorship program where seniors are really helpful in guiding the juniors. There is also a faculty-student mentorship program where any student can approach respective faculty members for any difficulty. Its a good initiative by the administration.

2 weeks breezed by and seniors landed on campus on june 24th. The official classes started for both us on june 25th. Once the seniors came on campus, there were lot of gyan sessions on various things. It used to happen pretty late in the night and for some 2 weeks, we had gyan sessions almost everyday at 10pm. Its part of xl culture and only people who are part of it and who will be part of it will be able to appreciate it. xlers know what I am talking about. future xlers will have to experience it..

The best thing that happened after 25th was the availability of good coffee There is a small place called dadu’s behind the campus which is almost like a lifeline to most people on campus. The coffee/tea/horlicks/sandwiches etc.. are his trademark. As someone said, he is best known for his customer service There is another night canteen which opens at 10 in the night and stays open till 3-4 in the morning when the campus goes to sleep completely

It feels good to be back in college and it also feels a little different after having worked for such a long time. Its very difficult to do arbit CP just for the sake of CP ( a few of them are really good at this. u have to be part of it to know it. )

Last week has got to be one of the most memorable weeks here. I had my placecomm interview(a small disaster), probability test stress buster, first probability test, official freshers party(punch nite), first wasp bite, first honey bee hive destruction, first lazy weekend on campus as more than half of my batchmates had gone on a ngo trip or an adventure trip. The most memorable one has to be the stress buster event conducted by the seniors before the first probability test. It absolutely rocked. To put it in context, probability test is considered one of the most difficult tests to pass on xl campus. There are usually atleast 2 people who flunk in that test. The prof is absolutely superb and teaches really well. But as most people know/realise, probability is probability and nothing can be done to it

For this week, there are 3 tests lined up and a small marketing competition amongst teams made of juniors, seniors of both bm and ir batches.

Its been a little hectic, but its been total fun till now. MBA is something that everyone has to do in their lifetime (or atleast the first month of MBA )

First impressions about the campus : The campus is small but very green and neat. I have seen the IIMB campus and I must say that the greenery beats the IIMB campus. The sports facilities are pretty good. There is a tennis court, proper football, basketball and volley ball courts. I played tennis after a long long time and found out that I have lost complete touch of it. I am planning to pick it up when I come to blr for the term break. The library has quite a few good books.

I have talked about a lot of things other than the main classes. More about this later.

Because of my irregularity in blogging, I am sure I have omitted a lot of other good things. I will try to take each individual threads(hostel life, campus life) of my life in xlri and try to write a blog post on each one of them.