Fraxers at XLRI

One of the things one learns very quickly at XLRI is that not all people have the same threshold of panic. While some are easily petrified at the thought of a project deadline, others awaken just the night before submission day. But XLRI offers yet another unique species – one that we call a FRAXER.

A fraxer is an individual who though considered intelligent and normal in most respects, suddenly turns into detached yogi at the merest hint of contributing to a group project. Indian philosophers would be impressed with this kind of renunciation!
Fraxers find new and innovative ways to express their personality. I had interesting experience in the first term with a particular project group. One problem that I faced with this group was the group’s collective (!) ignorance of the existence of a certain Microsoft product called PowerPoint. Being the only computer engineer in the group, I was always entrusted with the job of designing the project presentation. I have no clue how being a computer engineer has anything to do with PowerPoint skills. After all, PowerPoint was designed for executives – people who are good at nothing but know a bit of everything! But try telling that to a group of fraxers. Of course, once you design the ppt, you have to give the presentation as well. And guess what, you would have to do most of the report as well. After all, you designed the presentation, so only you understand its contents. (For the uninitiated, projects at XLRI work in the reverse way. Making the presentation is the first step of the project as opposed to being the last step.)

How to become a successful fraxer?

A successful fraxer is one who does nothing for a group project, yet the group members feel powerless to do anything about it. Follow these steps to become a successful fraxer:

Create an illusion of ignorance – Pretend not to know anything about the subject on hand, thereby excusing your lack of contribution.

Add negative value to a project whenever you actually work. This will ensure that group members won’t approach you for anything except the most risk-free part of the project such as collecting the printouts!

Smile like an angel – yes it helps! Develop a personality that is so charming that people actually feel bad about asking you to work.

Pretend to be working on other projects. This can be accomplished by opening an excel sheet and pretending to do something for a Finance elective project whenever a group member calls you for a meeting.

Sleep – Yes, sometimes it helps to just sleep. Most people hesitate to wake up a sleeping person and would rather do a project by themselves.

Become a perfectionist – This is accomplished by becoming disproportionately interested in the
nitty-gritty issues such as font choice, font sizes, margins etc of the project report. This will ensure that group members won’t approach you for fear that you would waste time on useless things resulting in a late submission.

Fraxers are an important part of society at XLRI. Fraxers are usually liked and popular too except when they have to work on a group project. Some Fraxers have this unique ability to not appear to be Fraxers when all they do is frax! Such individuals are specialists in the art of looking busy and doing nothing. Interestingly, Fraxers are not necessarily people who aren’t interested in academic pursuits. Far from it, quite a few Fraxers I know are doing really well on the CQPI front. I guess Fraxers might someday become better managers – after all what is management but the ability to get others to do your work.

Author: Mohit Kishore BM, 2005