It was never about ‘D by DX’s or asymptotic lines which never mean anything! It has never been about swallowing a few pages up whole overnight and spitting the pages out, without having the goddamn decency to assimilate even a few captions… It has never ever been about dirty un-understandable balances or the fact that 2100 is a boundary condition for turbulence!! We have been lied to.
The foremost institutions of learning have pulled the bloody wool over our eyes; our eyes, only too willingly, have submitted to the shroud. We sit here today, indolent as ever, unwilling to put in even that small ounce of energy into understanding what we came here to do. We sit and we get tired of sitting. We get bored. And we begin watching a movie – a movie which propagandizes a well known foreign institution – lifting it a few notches further in our heads; Awesome has just become God-level. And then we curse. We curse the books; the profs; the methods; the exams; the whole f*#ing system! And we sit in awe of those people sitting abroad, going about their jobs with ostensibly effortless ease.
I don’t know where to start. Is it the professors? Is it Us? Is it MHRD? Is it…
The professors, of course, have failed miserably to perform their basic function – to mentor the student. But they aren’t here to mentor us; are they? They aren’t here out of choice… They seem to have been dumped here. One advice to all those who are thinking about pedagogy as a career: Teach if Teaching is your first love. If you are going to teach because you think you have no better option, then kill yourself. That’s better.
But you can’t really blame a professor, can you? They probably were subjected to the same means of education as we are now, and they know no better. And they don’t want to know any better. But that can’t stop someone who claims he chose Engineering for his life, can it? And in no realm of earthly imagination can Engineering sound boring… So what is it?! Why do we think that life beyond the IITs, far away across the oceans, is all lovely and beautiful; life eased by push-button technology and magical inventions. You can bet your four years in the college that they slog their backsides off like we can hardly imagine. Nothing comes easy.
And why does every one of us feel that it is a pain to go through what we are being taught. If there is one thing I have learnt, it is that Work doesn’t remain Work once you start loving it. And Science and Engineering once stood for everything that I believed in… Where has that gone now? It is only plausible that I have fallen to a devil called Disillusionment. But then, so has everyone else! How the hell does it make sense?
How does it make sense that the highest ranker is so oft looked down upon and is subjected to ridicule rather than veneration? And how does it make sense that the highest ranker in a class studies for the Grade, without love for what he is doing? Why does it happen that 'Management' becomes a fall-back phrase as the senior undergraduate year approaches? Life is not about eliminating opportunities and choosing what you hate least. It’s about what you love most.
If you don’t love anything, your existence is irrelevant. Obsolete.
Today, I met a man who explained to me why his name was prefixed by the phrase “Doctor of Philosophy”. I am afraid I have met him too late; beyond the point of no return. He explained to me the ways of nature, the ways of an engineer and the ways of an ideal engineering institution. He told me about the oneness of man and machine… the union of all the disciplines at the pinnacle of human achievement… And how nothing is possible without effort, observation and intelligence…
Did I get senti? Hell, yes. But can I do anything about it…
Yup ! That's the way things go around here. A person going his own way, as opposed to the crowd, is branded as a self-conceited dandy, or as one might say, a 'ghissu' in Roorkee jargon. But does it really make a difference? I mean, who cares about what somebody else makes of us? Be cool. Hakuna Matata !
ReplyDeleteToo many questions kondrews. Too many. I guess this is what fourth year does to you. Answer this first: Who on earth is John Galt?
ReplyDeleteWhy this sudden outburst?
ReplyDeleteAnd might I add, your questions have stirred a gamut of emotions.
Go read Atlas Shrugged. This had happened to me when I had read her books.
ReplyDeleteDude great post apart(I read all your posts. I'm just too lazy to comment amid all the Roorkee specific conversations. Seriously man, you should widen your audience), you seem to be using words without knowing fine shades in meaning. Pedagogy is not just to teach, but the philosophy of teaching. You should've said "One advice to all those who are thinking about pedagogy as a career: Take it up if Teaching people how to teach is your first love."
ReplyDelete@ Baba,
ReplyDeleteI can't agree with you more... I just wish everybody can see things this way.
@ Krownose,
I wonder... And I haven't read Atlas Shrugged dude... Had to Google that one!
@ PPT,
The stuff that I heard today are the kinds of dialogues writers put into their books.
@ Vix,
I must, then.
@ Ani,
ReplyDeleteThanks man... But a prof is a pedagogue, I would still like to think. And I was given to understand Pedagogy was the word I was looking for... unless Wordweb is wrong, of course. You might well be right. Words baffle me these days :)
Been there done that. Obviously, expecting yourself to get motivated from the insti is the last thing you should even imagine. But once you fall in love with something (math, in my case), you just can't get enough of it. I am sad, and math cheers me up, I am happy, math dances with me. :)
ReplyDeleteSo I think one of the most important things in one's life, is L.O.V.E
That's John Galt speaking.
ReplyDelete@ Shag,
ReplyDeleteI have never expected the insti to motivate me... I only wish it wouldn't demotivate and disillusion!
@ Dang,
Is it? Now I must read the book.