Snapshots from Hell

The high acclaimed rating and astounding word-of-mouth review made me buy this ‘compelling’ book “Snapshots from Hell: the making of an MBA” by Peter Robinson. The book’s blurb says -- “A book for wannabe MBA’s, anyone desirous of applying to a B-school or anyone in business”. Though my dreams of apping for MBA is slowly fading away, I gave a rethought, a serious contemplation to read this, at least to make a judgment about how a B-School is really like. Change is inevitable and perhaps, who knows, I’d be tempted or rather motivated to change my notions again. Accompanied by too much enthu, I finally bought this paperback yesterday.

The author Peter Robinson worked as a speech writer at the White House during Reagan’s period and later looks like he took a choice to do MBA (for the obvious reasons -- earning fat pay!). The book is about the story of the author himself during his MBA days at Stanford during 1988- 1990. So far, I’ve come across ~ 80 pages and find that unlike Chetan Bhagat, Robinson has dwelled much on the plight of the students and the hectic schedule of the B-school. Chetan Bhagat’s ‘5 point someone’ had a blend of college masti, romance and very little of academics spiced with sentiments. Here, in ‘Snapshots..’, one gets to see in his pages more of lectures, case studies and class room problems. But thanks, the answers to the problem/discussion are given in very small font down the pages, so that if the reader needs he can go through them. On a lighter note, the author makes fun of the elite ‘poet’ section of the class. ‘Poets’ constituted the non-business/accounting background people who formed a sizeable chunk of the class.

Though not that gripping, I find the material pretty worth reading…And yes, its hilarious with its fundo-joy-ride of the B-school. Chalo lets see how it moves further…

KASI
A bibliophile