Academic Rigour

The academic rigour is really getting to people here.
Placement season and approaching exams combined with dry runs have made us quite susceptible to this disease. Usually it acquires epidemic proportions but generally vanishes after exams are over. This periodic disease has only one known cure, excision of the diseased individuals from their surroundings. It is also to some extent contagious.

Symptoms include but are not limited to:

• Asking stupendously idiotic questions in class (these generally qualify for the Sayal Saab Rolling Trophy)
• Sucking up to professors and asking for probable examination questions
• Camping out in the library
• Mailing professors and other arbit people with questions like, “how can one get an Excellent rating in evaluation of rigour of submission”
• Spamming people to ask doubts over the local mail exchange

And then there are people who claim to Think Vast and accentuate the academic rigour. These are the people who will send you detailed guidelines as to submission of assignments and the evaluation criteria, especially in response to above the mails.

Here is a sample

a few first level observations are:
- very original work with variation of language (How about French?) vis-à-vis the case study language
- beyond macro 1st level remarks
- having the Gestaldt view (or Gestalt psychology?)
- making observations that connect up with the academic concept of the case study

certain things are obvious:
- submission before deadline (if possible, make an early submission as this would kill any perceived impression ‘copying has been done’) (If you are so smart they why go by the perceptions?)
- a certain minimum length of analysis just as a certain maximum
- NOT sharing ur work with others (US has the academic culture of no one sharing his/her work as evaluations determine scholarships etc, in fact seniors also do not help; in India the smart students are actually dumb and act generous, though collaboration is absent in many Indian B-schools too…after all, the karmic experience of making a submission (aren’t we getting a bit too spiritual here?) on one’s OWN was the real learning, copying someone else’s work and submitting the same was sidestepping the true purpose of enrolling for a two year course)

I have just decided that I’m too bored to follow all these complex instructions. So I’ll just forget to submit all these assignments. And if you didn’t know, the purpose of all these assignments was just to prepare us for better class discussion.

Now if someone is so jobless as to sit and evaluate all these assignments and then give a grade like “VERY GOOD” with the comment “seem to have copied”

The ending comments on the message titled “Guidelines on Excellence in Submissions” are

- just as a chess player who can visualize 5-8 moves ahead without physically touching the pieces, or a sudoku player able to imagine multiple entries without actually penciling them in, same way a large RAM holding the entire case study generates quality analysis replete with insights

Which essentially means that we are big computers.

Song for the mood
Peter Gabriel: I Grieve.