Summer Surprise

"We don't celebrate till every last one of us is placed."

Just when I was convinced the competition could not get worse, just when I was convinced the only thing that mattered was a standard format sheet of paper with exaggerated accomplishments, just when I was convinced that the only thing that was of any significance in life was a company telling me I was worthy of being interviewed by looking at that sheet, along comes a statement like this to catch me completely off guard.

It made me smile. It made me proud. More than anything, it just made me plain happy. We are still a team in this institute. We may fight till the finish for our dream job, but we will make sure everyone reaches the finish line. And that, in the end, is somehow more important than the daily shortlists being pinned on the notice board that cause so much anguish, animosity and attitude changes.

There are some things in life investment banking can never buy. For everything else, I suppose there is a Day Z shortlist.

Quantitude

I am in one of my random moods.I feel like taking two and two and making 2 million 2 hundred twenty two thousand two hundred and twenty two. If I got that number right, I would be extremely happy. Since apparently I am dyslexic with maths. Which is really the point of this post.

Let me assure you I wasn't always like this. I had a tremendous aptitude for maths. My kindergarten teacher firmly stated in my progress report (which I still have, in case you don't believe it), "Maithri can identify all the numbers faster than her peers in class."

What went wrong after such stupendous progress at such an early stage in my life, you ask, astounded. Well, I believe there are various reasons for the sudden and rather tragic demise of my quant skills, and some of them came to a flash to me during my MPPO quiz today. (Yes, this is another tragic story, how answers to one question pop up in an entirely irrelevant situation and affect the task on hand adversely. We shall discuss this later on, when we are on the rather sensitive subject of grading)

Coming back, why did my quant skills disappear after that amazing start? The answer is to be found in Some-Person-Whose-Name-I-Can't-Remember-Now's Motivational Theory, which states that - When external incentives/ rewards are given for a task which is intrinsically motivated for a person, the person actually loses his/ her intrinsic motivation.

Implication: If only my kindergarten teacher had not praised me so at such an ahem, tender age, I would have currently been acing all the national level maths olympiads. Sigh. My luck, you can say. All those people who are adept in maths today are those who were ruthlessly criticized and who failed at a younger age. I am telling you, behind each of those math success stories today is a tragic childhood. (This is in line with That-Fellow's Motivational Theory given above. Don't ask me for further explanations!)

Which further reminds me of my grandmother. Now, there was an intelligent lady. While my parents were busy telling me to pursue my area of interest (English), my grandmother firmly told me, "Maithri, there is no point in being good at English. Maths is where it begins and ends. Do well in that, I am telling you."

If only I had paid heed to those words. Instead, today I have this fancy blog and quant skills that make me want to jump off a roof. Then again, I suppose if I had applied my grandmother's theory to my courses here, she would have told me there is no point focusing on subjects like MPPO and MO, which incidentally was one of my key scoring areas in term 1. Looks like she would have been disappointed with me today as well. Sigh.

Let me see, I have blamed my teachers and my parents for my maths skills. Maybe I should put in a little bit on wrong genes as well. My father apparently did not get anything above a C in maths in his IIT/ IIM days. The maths gene line died with my grandfather.

And that, my dear ignoramuses, is the reason for my quantophobia. It really is not my fault. Nothing ever is. :)