College Cogitations

Time, as they say, does fly.

Do you remember the New Year's Eves you celebrated as a child? For a young me, the 31st night was different from the other festivities of the year. As a ritual, as the clock reached midnight I used to devote some time contemplating upon the year gone by. Friends made, books read, birthdays celebrated, holidays enjoyed, and other such innocent enjoyable tidbits from the last twelve months would crowd my mind. This practice of introspection is something I still carry out every New Year's Eve. With the passing of the years and suppression of free spirits, the reflections I encounter now are of quite a different kind, but what hasn't changed a fraction is the childlike astonishment I still derive upon discovering the simple fact, that yet another year has passed. How could it possibly end so quickly!

More than two years back when I was on the brink of starting college, someone had given me a pretty sound piece of advice. Your college changes your life completely, he had said, but for the better or for the worse is a decision up to you. So neatly and concisely put, I appreciate now. Two years and some more into college, during this critical time of the year when yet another fresh batch of students await what lies beyond those coveted doors of admission, a little contemplation and advice seems due. Things are definitely going to differ depending on people and circumstances, but the general sentiments, I hope, will not be overly contrary to anyone's.

Half of my undergraduate days have passed and it seems that I am on a permanent roller-coaster which has no intention of pausing. You learn and you experience, you progress through the motions at breakneck pace, you are thrown up in the air and then you have the bitterest of falls, only to be thrown up again. You are living as if on a persistent and continuous high where your mind is, if nothing else, active. This frenzied state of activity, it is to be noted, is not at all occurring on an academic plane only, and that is where things get so absurdly interesting. School education was a cushioned fortification, the protected andarmahal of palatial residence. The big city outside the palace is a jungle where wolves hunt alone and in packs. Welcome to college, the prep-school for the big transition from secured interiors to an insecure exterior, where girls and boys become women and men.

"You are primarily a student, and whatever other activity you may wish to pursue should come after that", thus spake the concerned parent, solicitous relative and the rest of our well-wishers galore when college started. Overburdened by well-meaning guidance, blissfully incorrect preconceived notions and a few mountain-loads of expectations, we step in through the gates. I would merely be wasting words if I tried to explain how entirely inaccurate I had been in my earlier conceptions about college, and how amazingly novel everything was around me when I stepped in. Savour your freshmen year like anything, our college seniors used to tell us, for nothing else is quite like it later on. To make mistakes and be perfectly acceptable in doing the same, to be a "junior" again after a long long time and have no precursory baggage to carry with it, to look up with awe at hallowed portals you had dreamed of entering and at long last you have obtained the keys to do so: those days were a chance to revisit the simplicity of boyhood but with a formed mind.

And then, as is the norm, life happens. When the initial reverence is broken, the vagaries of college life come to the fore. The law of averages has this irritating habit of catching up. Outstanding professors are balanced by rotten ones; the best of friends are counteracted by the worst of them. Also, the mind gears up for life beyond college, which is one heck of a decision to make. It is then that the true worth of you and your institution is exposed. When the initial glamour is diminished and a rhythm has been established, how are things spanning out?

A riot of confusions

Education takes a new turn and undergoes a complete makeover. Whichever discipline you may be pursuing, the rate at which new things are learned and applied is phenomenal. To a Learner, the ocean of knowledge is at his beckoning. But since in today's day and age the Learners are an endangered species encountered only in Rajkumar Hirani films, let us address the needs of the more practical minded, for whom there are grades. Oh grades, what a conundrum you are... The simplest solution would be to get the best grades and be done with it. But for those of you who appreciate the minor snags in this approach, certain misgivings may prevail! Banal and clichéd though it may sound, the grades are not the end itself, but the means to quite a different end, vast in size and more enduring in nature. They provide a depiction of the potential of a student, but a depiction only. But at the same time, the sculpture may be susceptible to slight errors in the hands of the maker in certain cases, but never should it be assumed that a model fashioned out of a well-bred German Shepherd would be made to look like a malnourished street dog. In simpler jargon, grades are very important, but there is life beyond them.

For a lot of people, college is the first time in twelve years that you are among a large group of unknown people and you are about to form a lasting bond with a lot of them. I remember standing in my admission queues, looking around, and wondering who among these strange faces around me are going to become my brothers-in-arms, my associates, my companions, my confidantes. These friendships last more, I had been advised by another senior, in comparison to your school mates. Maybe such generalizations should not be made, but the fact remains that your compatriots from college have met and known you as an adult, and despite each having all the convolutions and complexities of an adult mind, you have gelled along. In other words, you know each other in all your imperfections before you strike a chord. In contrast, I suppose most people are acquainted with the very awkward feeling when childhood friends from school met after a long time turn out to be entirely different people as adults, and old memories (and long silences) become uncomfortable.


Through the inconceivable highs and the gut-wrenching lows that life provides abundantly, your college mates are the people you celebrate and lament with. These times do not simply remain as echos in some sentimental corner of your heart; they fashion and construct your character. That a person is known by the company he keeps is a very old adage, and never is it more appropriate than now. Distractions are not the rarest of occurrences in the life of a young adult, and more often than not they are brought to the fore by a companion. Dabbling with politics and dreams of changing the world crop up. It is perfectly reasonable to dream - where would we be without them - but contact with reality should not be for a second forsaken. Every successful human has undergone this journey of sweeping aside distractions, training the lens on the object of focus, but all the same occasionally stopping by the wayside to pick up a shiny pebble or two.

Jonathan Livingston Seagull

"So long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, adieu..." As every month ends, we turn the pages of our calendar. Very soon, sooner than I shall ever anticipate, will come a New Year's Eve when I shall pause and think of my journey through college, and how it ended so abruptly. I shall be soaking in the last bits of sunshine before twilight takes over. Bathing in those slanting rays of the dying sun, I shall be bidding adieu to four years of intense pleasure, testing trials and a collage of unforgettable memories. Imagine a huge maze, which upon entering takes you four years to cross. If I am lucky enough, I'll conquer it in time. I'll look back at the young boy who entered the maze, then at my own reflection upon leaving, and note the difference. But for the moment, I'm stuck right in the middle, fighting and progressing inches at a time, with friends and family at my side, hugely enjoying every moment of it. Let me enjoy the maze while it lasts.

"Not all those who wander are lost" : J.R.R. Tolkien.

Musings of an Engineer

In the 21st century, expectation has a synonym in duty.

Being an engineering student, in a little over two years time from now, I will be expected to have gained sufficient knowledge and enough skill in this profession the wise men named engineering, to carry forward a tradition more than five-and-half thousand years old, when the wheel-and-axle was invented in Bronze Age Eurasia. Have a look at the earliest image of a wheeled cart, excavated in Poland, and then at the smartphone in your hand. The weight of the heritage, for sure, is not a light one to bear.

How would our world be without these?

Adam and Eve were the finest creations of God. What separates their descendants from the 8 million other species of co-inhabitants is a superior brain and a will to modify our environs in a manner most suitable for us. Microeconomic theory assumes that human psychology compels man to strive for the circumstances and situations among various restrictions which provide maximum utility or satisfaction to him. In layman's language, I would rather use a plough rather than dig up my field with bare hands, given that I do not own a tractor. It was easy enough to break a branch off a tree, but the difficulty lay in sharpening its point, attaching a metal tip and building a device that throws the arrow with sufficient speed to maim the deer it was aimed at. Thus started the trade of engineers: Modifying the environs to obtain maximum utility.

The developers of the earliest wheel, and then in the course of time the potter's wheel, the iron tools and other similar items, hugely important though they were in terms of contribution, cannot be called engineers by today's definition, for back then trade was based on the principle of trial-and-error. As science was yet to develop, the practice lacked the strong foundation which physics and maths were to give it later on. Still, that does not in any way take away the skills and contributions of those ancient engineers who without any firm scientific knowledge had perfected their skill and passed them on through generations. Post the Industrial Revolution in Europe and the emergence of USA as a world power, engineering was here to stay. Nevertheless, as in any emerging field, at that point educated and qualified engineers were still rarities and were treated with lots of respect.

How NOT to misuse a boon of Science.

And look how it all has changed! The 19th and 20th centuries came up with two brilliant inventions which were to change for ever the way life is lived on the planet. We got electricity, and we got the computer. The paradigm shift caused by each was to alter human wants on a fantastic scale, and the onus was on the engineers to provide for the increased demands. Science provided the solid bedrock for engineers and the newest playthings available in an engineer's nursery seemed intent on breaking every restriction there had ever been on human satisfaction. And in some cases, human stupidity.

"Science is about knowing; engineering is about doing", said American author Henry Petroski. As of today, engineers happen to be ruling the roost. One comes across endless inane social media jokes trolling engineers, but one of the more accurate ones described a postman asking a shopkeeper where the house of the local engineer was, and eliciting the reply "Kisi bhi ghar me ghus jaao, yahan to saare engineer hi hai...". Jests apart, engineers are to be found at a dime a dozen these days. Growth in number of colleges across the length and breadth of the country which purportedly teach engineering is akin to that of shopping malls. In some of them, the quality of engineers produced should be placed under consideration.

As always, centres of absolute excellence have come up and are thriving. They absorb the finest brains of the country and develop them into skilled professionals. These institutes are cause for pride, and not of concern.

An error of judgement.

What should be worrying us instead, is the army of not-so-skilled engineers who are also populating the market. Whether it be lack of brains, poor undergraduate education or lack of discipline and honesty, these wannabes (for want of a better term), are not quite bringing to the table what his or her profession demands. What it results in is dilution of the skill of an entire workforce. A very ironic and saddening comment in this regard comes to mind, coming from one of the best professors I have had the opportunity to learn from. With absolutely no disrespect to the medical community, it was sometime last year that he had made this observation in class. When an unskilled surgeon makes one incorrect incision during an operation, one patient dies. When an unqualified engineer makes one error of judgement while designing a flyover, scores of people die underneath. Little did any of us guess that at that moment somewhere in the city such a fatal design was on its way to construction, acceptance and eventual devastation on an overwhelming scale.

Why do we all want to become engineers? A brief survey tells me that the recurrent justifications are a secure future, an assured job (?), an appeal for a technical branch of education, and promise of a (comparatively) easy student life. Some students did maybe make a bit of a sacrifice in letting go of subjects where they had a bit more interest, but not all such cases are as heart wrenching as Farhan Qureshi's... A matter of deciding in favour of the greater good for the future. In my case, it was a combination of all, but primarily an inclination towards applied sciences instead of theory. How far these expectations are realized is a separate topic for debate, but maybe in some cases, there were other reasons for this choice of career, that it was the only option available to pursue, and all the friends were doing it.....

In harmony.

It is not I but far wiser men who have stated that distinctions between subjects do not exist in reality; only in our perceptions of it do we have them. CV Raman, a distinguished pianist himself, said that Science is the highest form of Creative Art. Software is a great combination between artistry and engineering, according to Bill Gates. Indeed, the greatest engineering marvels of the world are known more for their artistic and cultural value. Art cannot sustain itself without engineering assistance, while a fine creation of an engineer is dry without art. The traditional feud between science and engineering is meaningless as well, for without either the other would fail to exist, even in the most rudimentary form. But, considering the manner in which we perceive things, subtlety is maybe not the most prominent quality! Science. Commerce. Engineering. Humanities. The walls that separate them in our minds are as prominent as the full-stops between the words...

An engineering marvel, and an artist's dream.

It is early days for me, and I have no idea yet as to how good or how bad an engineer I will become. Marks do reflect some of your capabilities, but not a lot. Which is a good thing and a bad thing, considering how marks-dependent our evaluation system is. Even the admission criterion at most engineering colleges is solely dependent on how much less of brain-freeze you are suffering from during three hours of an entrance exam! So instead of harping on how tough it is to survive today as I did in a previous blog, it would rather be of more benefit if I returned to the perusal of the syllabus of my upcoming semester. The next two years would see me graduating along with a flock of fellow engineers, each trying to outsmart the other. Those among us whom the education system and the industry would be deeming suitable for this ancient trade, would continue along the well trodden path and lead the contented life of an engineer. And those of us who will be rejected at the industry's sieve would be forced to look at other shores for sustenance, greener or otherwise!

 

"One man's magic is another man's engineering. Supernatural is a null word": Robert Heinlein.