A week to remember forever…

When I registered for the case competition organized by our department, I never realized it is going to be so exacting. When I turn back and see how we worked for 1 week, it amazes me…I still couldn’t figure out from where I got such an energy…” It takes struggle, a goal and enthusiasm to make a champion” said some one I remember…how true it is!…week of sleepless nights, arduous effort and dedication has yielded us something that we can really proud of…Yep…Our team won 1st prize in the competition for giving the best solution 🙂

http://cmis.tamu.edu/Case-Web/winners.asp

I have to tell you about the background of this competition..the case was a REAL one prepared by a REAL consulting firm…the task was to come up with a business proposal with our suggested solution, technical details, prototype and budget analysis for a given RFP (Request for Proposal)…The experience that I had in real proposals in IT industry really came handy but then the time was so short for the amount of work that we had to do…

It doesn’t stop there…we had a mid-term exam in between and a project report to be submitted as part of another course…and I had an Internship interview…amidst all these, I kept pushing my team to put our 100% on this as the judges were going to be from various reputed companies…I wanted to make a first good impression on them…thats how it started…but it never stopped…we were so enthusiastic and dwelled into the case for a week completely forgetting sleep…but, with 15 teams participating (which had lot of teams who had already participated in similar competitions) and giving a tough fight, we were aware that its not going to be easy for us….

So, we devised a strategy…”Attention to detail” and “Innovative business propositions”…I feel these two were our key for victory…with a time crunch, we were able to come up with a report which addressed every possible detail of the system (the report was 45 pages :O)…and the judges were really impressed by our propositions…I should mention about the PPT with cool diagrams that I had created (IT Experience helps 🙂 ) which got some extra brownie points :)….

350$ Scholarship and 200$ gift cards…thats what I got…above all, a very good reputation amongst potential employers and good recognition in my school…I hope I leverage this in my job search…As of now I am too excited…I am going to Dallas tomorrow to watch THALA in action (Aegan) and will surely come up with my review…Till then, take best care of yourselves and keep watching this space….

Life is busy :) :(

I think ‘blogging’ is there only in my Resume as a hobby and not in my life…This is the time I get lot of new things and interesting experiences to talk about. But, I have only 24 hrs a day and always have something pending to be attended and completed. Life has never been so hectic with multitude of tasks to be completed at the same time. Its a new experience and I am managing it so far.

In between, during last couple of weekends, I reprieved due to advanced planning and execution of tasks. I wanted to share my exhilarating experiences last week itself, but couldn’t accomodate blogging into my schedule. On 5th October, there was a violin concert arranged by SPICMACAY (Society for Promotion of Indian Classical Music & Culture Amongst Youth) association of our college. Mysore Brothers (Shri. Mysore Nagaraj & Shri. Dr. Mysore Manjunath) enthralled the audience with their excellent violin performance. They were accompanied by Shri. Srimushnam Raja Rao with Mrudhangam and Shri. Gowri Shankar with Tabla. The close to three hours of performance never showed any slack anywhere. I never attended any classical music concerts in India and neither got a chance. This was my first time and I really enjoyed it as it came as an escape from my routine.

 

 

The next escape came this weekend where I attended my first American College Football game between our college team (Aggies) and Kansas State. People here are crazy about college football. In a small town like College Station, if the attendance on that day was 78,000 people then imagine the level of enthusiasm these people show on football. I actually went there on behalf of AID (Association for India’s Development) where we taken care of a shop to sell food items to visitors. We get a share of the profit and send it to India for good cause. It was a tiring day as I was standing from 10 to 4. Nevertheless, the effort was worth as we were able to collect around $500 in a single day. I was able to watch and enjoy the match in between my work. Though our team lost the game, the last quarter (which I watched) was intense. (I am slowly learning the rules)

 

 

I just completed two mid-term exams and leaving a sigh of temporary relief. I have two more exams scheduled for next week with an impending case competition apart from my regular work. So, its time to get back to work. Will try to write whenever I find time. But, please keep visiting irrespective of whether I write or not 🙂