marketing or finance ?

It was a class last week.The bearded professor in the kurta pajama asked casually "How many of you read the Economic Times ?"
.
I remembered the colourful "The Times Of India" copy i left on the bed before leaving the room.And even amongst its "non-management" flavored pages , the sports page interests me most.How unbecoming of an IIM student , eh ?

Anyways , the professor squinted with his mouth agape at the "not-to-the-profs-expectations" number of hands that shot up.

And he regained his normally sarcastic tone and remarked
"looks like most of you want to specialise in marketing ...pretty unambitious lot of wannabe managers".

Now this is what beats me.There is this thing about IIM C atleast , and i dont know about the other B Schools, that marketing is always treated as a poorer cousion of finance as a specialisation.Its almost like a gleaming new sportsbike and a scooter with a torn seat.
How can u compare marketing and finance when all about the stuff they involve is so different ?But its like if one opts for marketing job , the first thought that shoots through the mind of a typical student here is that "so the goof bungled up in the finance jobs ".

I came to IIM C with an inclination towards marketing .And after spending 7 months here , it has only increased.Thats nothing to do with my A in marketing management and C in financial accounting though.

And its the first time I am making a conscious decision regarding my career.When i did my tenth , this name IIT came in from somewhere and pasted itself on my life for the next two years before i could know whatz happening.Not that it was a bad thing to happen.I suspect i was too naive at that time to think of anything so important as my career so it was the right thing to settle for an IN thing , and IIT is an IN thing.I prayed to god to get me into an IIT.But god was on vacation when i took the IIT-JEE and i got a lowly rank of 2828 and had to settle for a lower engineering college.

And then suddenly during my third year in engineering , IIM was the IN thing to be studying for at college.Career launcher and IMS replaced microprocessors and operating systems.
Everybody wanted to be in an IIM.So I thought if everybody wanted it so bad , it must be good , so i tried for it.Now this wasnt a very deliberate decision at that point of time ,but my experience with the "oh-so-interesting" technical subjects and my expertise with them only served to reinforce the decision and by my fourth year of engineering , i was as sure of wanting to do an MBA as Australia is of beating Bangladesh.

But this decision about marketing VS Finance has to be very deliberate and calculated.Because there is no next institute for me.This is it.I am actually gonna do wat i decide now.My summers is in the finance domain , a financial consulting summers at Ernst and Young.I hope I find out enough during it to make a right decision.It better be.