Friday 10 June 2011

Dos and don’ts for holidays!

It’s on ladies and gentleman. Our semester holidays officially start as from next week.  Grab a beer while you are reading, heard it helps to concentrate.  So, should you start looking for internships, or maybe hit the parties straight away? Have you planned any serious revision to catch up on that core module you just can’t get rid of? Okeyyyyyyy, now that was ridiculous.  Download a pirated copy of Crysis 2 is also an option. So many things you could do! Confused people? Worry less my dear comrades! The big fat panda (me) is here to guide in order to make the most of these holidays.  Follow my tips below.

First things first, Do not throw away your notes. You might fail the module and have to do it again, or you could make decent money selling those notes to some nerds in your campus AND, won’t you just love showing off to mum and dad how you worked hard this semester? Just spill those lengthy a4 sheets everywhere in your room. Show that you mean business. Yeah.
Get yo’Ass on Blackboard and remove any witty comments you might have made about any lecturer in the discussion topics. You just don’t want to mess with the lecturers who’ll be marking your papers, trust me. As you’re there, download all the lecture slides and save them in a nice folder on your local hard disk. You never know when you’re going to need these. I once had to refer to year1, semester 2 modules in my final semester assignment.

Irrespective of the year and semester you’re currently enrolled in, chances are you might have to do Business Capstone in your last semester.  Your friends are right about it, it is hell and the ruling devils in its town are Karlo and Shafiiq. Get in touch with a final semester student (usually those getting drunk in the parking or stealing Kleenex in the toilets to get over capstone) and ask for a copy of the Capsim Management and Team Guide and start reading these documents. By the time you’ll reach your last semester, you’d have already acquired enough knowledge of the subject and this will help you a lot. If you are lucky enough though, rumours have it that they were planning to remove this unit, so start praying, seriously.

If you’re in year 3, semester one, CTI will find an internship option for you. Now this is a bit like Chatroulette, you never know where you might land in.  Even though CTI tries hard to find the best internship experience for you, based on their own standards, you might still end up doing just paper work and wasting precious time experiencing the Grapevine concept you learned in OB 200. Think, what would be the best experience for you according to your career plans?  Then start looking for the top local firms in your future industry and seek internship opportunities. The good thing about being a CTI student is that no matter the situation, doors seem to be always open.

Now if you are not a third year student, screw what was mentioned above. You totally have to enjoy your holidays to the max. Crash clubs, get drunk and puke wherever you want to. Just be safe and make sure you can make it through the next semester in one piece. Advice from a third year student: before reaching third year, party as much as you can cause later it gets harder and you won’t have time.  Third year students, just don’t commit suicide yet, capstone will guide you to a peaceful death. 
The Big Fat Panda

Friday 6 May 2011

Awesomely Christel


The first day I stepped in CTI, besides bringing up new terms reminiscent of Latin to my ears like ‘blackboard’ and ‘oasis’, some lady scared me to death. Mrs Christel Ramloll, who later became my lecture for several units, fails miserably in pretending to be stern and austere. Yet, she really freaked me out on the first day; I thought university life would be hell. Well, I don’t deny it, when deadlines draw near and at times clashes; it is close to what I think hell looks like. 

The important point here is that we are blessed to have a role-model like Christel at CTI. Someone who goes out of way to help students, who is ever-ready to explain something you could not understand and the list goes on. To cut short, her dynamism does not only reflect in her teaching skills, but also in her personality. The several calls and messages we send her as the deadlines approaches should be really annoying, nevertheless, she manages to reply to every student like they were the first one consulting her.

As third year students, we could not find another way to thank her for the past three years. So we decided to dedicate the first article of the blog to her. We look forward as tomorrow leaders to reflect whatever you could have taught us, both academic and non-academic and again, thank you.




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