Teacher/advisor/Attitude problem

Everybody raved about this business valuation class offered by Sarin. It had more followers at one point in time than the movie Avatar has right now (Hyperbole). Turns out all that glitters is not gold. For me both turned into heaps of disappointment. Sarin is a wonderful and talented teacher just that he hardly puts his skills into practice. His projects were fun in fact the curriculum was fun for the first few days and then it slowly started to get under everyone's skin. I was lucky to be in a very very cohesive group where each one of us brought something really good to the table. Some were not just as lucky and had tough time dealing with the other group members. Problem was not that everyone knew everything. The problem was that everyone thought they knew everything when in reality no one knew everything and the one's who did know everything thought they were god's gift to mankind and threw attitude around which annoyed the larger egos.

Stories apart I honestly enjoyed the first few challenges and truth is learnt a lot on my own but then some where I got tired. I got tired of being given gloomy, you try and figure out kind of goals. Sarin could have handled it much better by throwing out some concepts which we did not know in brief and then let us loose on the battle ground. For me I felt as if I was driving motorbikes on rugged terrain when in fact bikes need good roads. I mean in our case bikes came first and then the roads did. Learning seemed an up hill battle. Thanks to an understanding group I made it and so did they.

From my personal experience I would strongly suggest people to take his class only if they have good team mates with some idea as to what is going on in the course otherwise an individual can always learn something else. I wish Sarin could give 100% to what he is teaching. Things would be so much more better. His knowledge and experience is invaluable and something more than a drop for students would go a very very long way.

However on the upside he taught me how to start with nothing and in fact deliver results in a given short period of time. Is not that what MBA's are supposed to do,"handle worst case scenarios?"On the down side I felt that there were so many things that I could and in fact did on my own and did not need a teacher. He always seemed like he taught because he had to teach and not because he wanted to teach. Hmm... what can I say about such people? There are lots of them out there.

For instance my graduate advisor who goofed up my unit calculations and then took almost a month to get it straight. When I requested her to give me a YES before the holidays so that I can file for my OPT she went roaring,"I work for 1400 students you are not the only one." I am glad I have that in black and white. I will send it back to her one day asking,"What do you think would happen if this goes to the Chair Person?." Why do people write their thoughts aloud in an hate email? That too in a country like the US? Where warrior lawyers are eager to sue left, right and center? Maybe she thought I would not do it because I fall in a student category, who, to begin with is an Indian and to end with a female? Well NEWS FOR YOU advisor lady sometimes a demograph like me does do the unimaginable. We do fight against people who oppress us.

Never mind maybe she is upset with too much work that she has. So does that give her the right to be arrogant? I do not know. And I honestly have moved on. What is the point in firing back everyone who is rude to us. Its negative energy anyway. What goes around comes around.

Its all about having a positive attitude. I am glad I stand up for myself and present my case. Having done MBA, I know for sure that there is no point arguing without facts and shouting will never make me right. And being lousy in attitude will only have people write a blog about me. So I hope someday both Sarin and Lady advisor wake up and change their approach as well as their attitude. For now I understand where they both are coming from. But that will not be the case always. So better change than never!