DCP - (D)mystified

... the word which is a rage in my class these days is 'DCP' ...

DCP for dummies expands to Desperate Class Participation and is quite a remarkable phenomenon/tendency/ in some circles even labeled as 'disease' which can b found in most 'b-schools'.

The basic defintion is "It is a (shameless) act of asking a question in the class to pickup marks for class participation or just to impress the professor"

This comes in various forms and though this article does not claim to exhaustively cover this phenomenon as newer variants keep cropping up every now and then ( just now got an update thru gtalk bout 2 new variants springing up in the neighbouring class), we do promise to keep you updated on the latest developements on this front.

coming back to the word in focus , DCP strikes in most lectures the most common and easily reconginable symptom is the raised hand which keeps pace with the movement of lecturer's eyes ...

the basic premise behind this is believed to be the good old proverb tht "in an mba course any publicity is good publicity" ... ooops was'nt the saying meant for politics! ... with so many questions being popped around in the class, brains of ordinary mortals like me are bound to get addled.

There are a few basic instances when DCP surfaces ... first and foremost is when the lecture gets a bit boring and some of the participants decide enough is enough and starts asking Questions .. no one really knows what these questions are and how they are related and so on ... Dont ask me any further details , i generally wake up during this time ... so pardon me for not noting the question or what exactly happened .. but more often than not the questions are met with an exasperated "so whats your point ? what are u exactly asking?" tone or with curt and abrupt to the point answers like the "that was the paper covered in last term ..." or "we are yet to discuss the relevence of that on krakotan economy ..." sorry some of us quietly doze off ...
Another is when partipant gets very enthusiastic and tries to really sink her/his teeth into it ..arrhhhhhhh ... more often than not these Q go much beyond scope of Phd in the subject !

Another funny variant is when person is despo type and feels bad tht she/he has not participated much and asks questions from the slide the lecturer is covering when point no:1 is discussed , the DCPer jumps to point 4 and asks some Q related to tht !

Somewhat harmless one is when a particpant suddenly wakes up after forty winks and more often than because Prof has seen her/him dozing ... When the mind is torn between annoyance in having to wake up and guilt in having missed what was discussed , she/he comes up a smart way to snap out this .. ask Q !

So the question that comes to our mind is tht why does this happen ? of course there are quite a few obvious explanations like someone out there who designed the course actually thought giving marks for participation was a good idea ( believe me lot of ppl r hunting for tht person , i assure u we will take proper care of her/him) , but during some really drab lectures I got some real interesting opinions/theories ... the best one was that DCP is perpetrated by a group aliens with a mission to destabilise planet earth and this is done thru contact with ppl who wil shape India of tomorrow .... This could easily explain why clever people yours truly avoid any class particpation to avoid any contact with these aliens .. we will outlast the aliens and Earth can count on us ...

now most of the profs are pretty smart folks and can easily see thru an attempted DCP .. now each one has their on style of dealing with it .. lenient/poor ones try to even answer it and get bogged down and have vacant looks on their faces as Q follow Q .. some just let it pass...
the best ones hav been a recent instance where the prof asks the participant to Repeat the Q ... this kinda puts many a DCPer to shame and the the subsequent Q would somewhat rephrased and more logical version of the first one .. some need repeated takes to get this right .. but ofcourse for all his noble intentions i feel there is a minor flaw in this approach keepin in mind the alien-infestation theory tht is doin rounds ... if such an approach is tried with an in-organic life form ,we could end up in endless loops of repeated Q till the alien or replicant or whatever it is runs out of gas/battery charge in its oxygen-methane convertor or some such thing ... ofcourse the fact tht such a thing has not happened in class has made many debunk the alien-invasion theory .. but the guys who proposed the theory assure me , they are working hard to find out more bout these alien life forms .

Another notable approach which is prety aggresive and is to take on dcp er and give some rubbish back and put her/him to shame . Sample this ... "this is like saying there is an ätomic power plant in Krygiztan "... "ok whats your point ?!!!" ...

On the whole however i wud admit tht whether the Q made sense or the ppl gained anything , for good or bad DCP has had an impact on our course and has certainly manged to infuse some life into even the most dullest of classes !

PS: As many of u have rightly guessed this was written in class !

First Impressions ...

Landed in Dubai on a hot summer day in the afternoon … right from the airport itself got accustomed to seeing things on a bigger or rather grander scale(compared to things back in India). We watched in awe as we moved across the huge airport . The moment we stepped out from airport and boarded the SPJCM pick up bus to hostel , we wherever we looked around the city it was just tall buildings n taller buildings emerging out of never ending miles of desert sand and amazing roads n flyovers full of dream cars zooming past us , the ‘wow’ factor continued. The city had set ‘lofty’ standards in our minds and upon arrival in the hostel was pleasantly surprised to see the lofty standards being maintained in the hostel too . The hostel is an entire apartment complex in International city on the outskirts of Dubai, it is just 20 min from college by Bus (arranged by college). We were all shown to our pre-allocated service apartments , which were much beyond what we had expected ! reminded me of the training days at a heaven called Mysore Infosys campus …

The college arranges transport from hostel to college in mornings and the buses leave on the dot , hence its quite a challenge for all of us to get ready in time to catch the bus …

The college is located in a place called academic city , which has lots of educational institutions in the middle of desert ! like most of the places in Dubai this place is also coming up fast and with huge sums of money being pumped in to develop world class infrastructure and things do happen here and happen fast . Its hard to imagine that the whole place was just a stretch of desert 3 yrs back !

All buildings are identical and after a long travel along numerous winding roads we finally reach the college building and after seeing the entire place and hostel , I was kind of thinking that the everything being excellent would be hard. So I thought initially that the college could be a letdown because we already had set very standards based on what we saw so far; I couldn’t be more mistaken … the first few hours itself changed whatever doubts I had about the place. The facilities , the kind of people , the classroom with beautiful amphitheatre like seating arrangement , with video recording of each lecture and the entire atmosphere convinced and reassured me that I had got a very good deal. We had a few ice breaker sessions for us to know each other (given that we were a batch of 150) better . then all the intricacies of the course was explained and we had a guest who was a VP in a reputed UAE based company telling us about life and business climate in middle east in general and Dubai in particular. We also had a couple of visits or rather sightseeing kinda tours arranged by college authorities to give us a feel of the city , mainly to get us adjusted to and feel the ‘global factor’, one of the main reasons for pursuing a MBA here in Dubai. The city visit was followed by a Dhow cruise followed by dinner on the dhow ( big boat) arranged by college as a welcome.

Having thus settled in at the ‘global’city of Dubai , we embarked on the business of learning or earning our stripes and the first week gave us enough indicator of what lies in store , people started adapting quickly to the frentic pace of life in a 1 yr course which almost covers most of the stuff taught in 2 yrs at SPJIMR. The excellent professors (mainly from SPJIMR along with a few resident faculty and guest lecturers from IIMs/XLRI) , the daily quizzes and assignments meant we had our hands full. Class full of people with work-ex ranging from 1-7 yrs of experience spread across all sectors meant rich and insightful classroom discussion/ interactions .In the first month itself we started getting an idea of business in UAE through a series of guest lecturers where people from various sectors in Dubai addressed us. Market research projects meant that all of us had to interact with businesses in Dubai and get to understand what it takes and how they do it ... mine was with a wonderful place called Wolfi's Bike shop .. we went there posing as customers and observed how they add value and how they do business in general ...

That’s just a month down … with 5 more months of learning to follow before heading off to Singapore…

Ps: i guess most of u mite hav already guessed from the wooden style tht this was written for college ! ;)