Don't Put Me to Test.

      Whoa!!!…..after a pretty long time I have made my presence. I had my mid-semester examinations going on, and I just couldn't find enough time for writing new stuff. The exams went average, not fantastic. Examinations are times when even the atheist prays to God for help. Everybody's noses are buried deep into notebooks and textbooks. 

      Exams in engineering colleges are quite interesting. Colleges in India except for some colleges in the southern part of the country follow the semester system. It has often been said that the only undesirable thing about the semester system is that you are screwed twice a year. A month before the exam, people start preparing. At least some do. Most students carry on with their merry life until about a couple of weeks before the D-Day. 

     

     Since many do not maintain class-notes, collection of notes of a particular subject becomes a priority. A lot of times students are unsure of the syllabus. The most popular and busy joints during this time are not KFC or McDonald's. That is because most students don't maintain class notes of most subjects. Hence they obtain the notebooks of those students regular in class and make copies. Now this can be a tedious process if done by hand. Enter the Xerox-wala guy. No business makes as much money as the local xerox machine-shops that dot the roads outside a college campus during exam time as these people do. Sometimes the xerox-wala knows more about the syllabus than the students themselves because he has been doing this for many years.

     Making copies of class-notes is not the only service provided by these shops. There is a type of photo-copying that is known as the 'Micro'. As the name suggests, this is the tiny avatar of the standard photocopy. Copies of important pages from textbooks in 'micro' are carried to the examination, sometimes hidden in the most creative places imaginable. During the test, frequent visits to the washroom are made to use these.

    Examinations are a very stressful period. There is a lot to study. But that doesn't bother the Indian engineering student. There is a common understanding that if you are not able to understand what you are studying, then it is out of syllabus. Students mug up entire courses in a matter of hours right before an exam. Such herculean tasks can't be done by anyone else.

    After the results are announced, it is usually seen that many have back-logs in various subjects. Backlogs are a part and parcel of engineering students. Engineering students joke that you are never a true engineer if you never had a back-log. Of course, these are cleared towards the end.  

The Money Pit

      Higher Education has always been expensive. Up to our school education, expenses such as fees, money for books, uniforms, etc remain fairly low, although this scenario is rapidly changing is India. Nowadays, we have private prep-schools in metros for tiny kids charging as high as secondary schools. The Education sector in India has become a lucrative business. Setting up a school or college is seen as an investment which guarantees high returns. India has thousands of colleges and private schools, and they often charge extremely high fees. Even though in India all private educational institutions have to be operated on a not for profit basis, still the owners of such colleges manage to siphon off huge sums through illegal means. Also, high fees doesn't mean that the quality of education imparted in these institutions is world class. The case of private schools is relatively good, as their standards are usually high. But somehow, colleges for technical education in India come nowhere near their counterparts abroad. The sad thing is, everyone here knows this. But still, they enroll in such colleges, year after year.

    Why does this happen in India? Well, I believe that the main cause for this is overpopulation in our country. This is the single most important factor why things are the way they are today in India. Our population is so large, that every year we generate a small nation of students who are ready to enter college. Now students in India have very limited choices when it comes to choosing a profession. Indian students, most often have to study to be an engineer or doctor. Why not study what you want to become, you might ask. Why not a photographer? Archaeologist? Sports researcher? Scientist in any other field? Or in every words, every thing 'unconventional'? 

   

It doesn't happen because in India a person's success is measured by how much he or she earns, what car they drive and the number of rooms in their apartment. To achieve all this, you have to graduate in a technical course, at least in India you have to. Other jobs, even if satisfactory, will not give you a secure livelihood all the time. We don't have jobs here for young researchers, and other professionals, which are good paying. An engineering degree will get you a stable job, and everyone will be happy. People here want to settle down as soon as possible, or else what will your "door ke rishtedaar" say about you? Who will want to marry you? This is how things work.

    But, if you really don't care about all this, then pick up your sword and shield and march into the battle of choosing your own career, instead of putting all your money into a crappy college and then working like maniacs to recover all that money. Live your life the way you want to. Haan, you might have to make do without a car for sometime.

Mass Bunk: A Myth

      Well, not always. Sometimes, like a rare comet, it happens. Before I say anything further, let me tell you first what a mass bunk means. I know you guys know everything about it, but I would like to give it a formal definition, like straight out of a book. A mass bunk is an attempt, to convince everyone in a class, not to attend classes for a given day or period, the reason for such an endeavor being the fact that the classes concerned are either too boring or simply because a majority of the people simply don't want to go. Or the fact that a new movie has been released and everyone wants to go see it. Sounds simple, but it is far from that. You see, it's all about convincing the right people. Because when a group

of people agree to do a certain thing, that thing happens.

     A few months after coming to college, everyone gets acquainted with each other just enough to know what kind of a student he or she is. When it comes to bunking, students can be classified into three categories: the first group, also called 'The 9 or 10 pointers', referring to their high cgpas', are the most studious people in a class. These people are the toughest nut to crack, because it seems that attending all the classes is the reason for their existence in this universe. They are the ones who usually ruin a mass bunk at the last moment by attending classes. It takes a lot of convincing to make this group of people agree. But the good thing about then is that they are predictable, unlike the category that is coming next. This is because these students will either attend all classes, all the time and hence will never support a mass bunk, or will give in after a bit of persuasion.

   The next category comprises of people who are in the middle zone, ie, average students. This group is like a sand dune in the Sahara Desert, constantly shifting with the wind. You can divide them, unite them, make a pie out of them; it all depends on your skill. Even though you can easily convince them to bunk, because of their volatile nature, you can never be sure. There is always that lone wolf in this group who can easily destroy any chances of a mass bunk. But other than this, this group, which consists of the largest number of students in any Indian engineering class, is okay.  Manageable.

   And then there is the last group. This group consists of people who set in motion a mass bunk in the first place. As you might have guessed, this category has students not so interested in studying. They are often the strong, loud, bully-type ones, but you can't really establish any pattern because everyone is a different person. They will verbally, or physically make you bunk classes. They also take action against people who don't comply.

   Enough with all this theory. Time for the practicals. A mass bunk is a continuous process: you have to constantly make sure that no one has gone to college, no one has called the teachers- stuff like that. I said that a mass bunk is initiated by the last group of students, but that can happen due to anyone from the second group as well. When a mass bunk is successful, it feels good. There is a sence of unity in a class. The atmosphere back in the hostels in jovial. But things turn out to be the exact opposite when a mass bunk fails. Abuses are hurled across the 'borderline' by the two warring factions of students, the lone wolves get intimidated by others, the mood is sour across the hostel corridors and people swear that they wont support anyone the next time it happens. But it happens. All over again.

Time is a Bird

       Time is a bird, it flies away. It waits for no one, especially for engineering students. Of-course, everyone is lazy in someway or the other and they seem to miss out on doing things on time. But for engineering students, it becomes a habit which is very difficult to change.

       Before joining college, in school, most of us are punctual in doing things, like getting ready for school, completing assignments beforehand, etc. But that happens only because our parents are there to watch over us. They make sure that we are doing things on time. But the moment we step into college, we are free to do things the way we like, at the time we like. If the classes are at 10 am, then no one gets up before 9:30 am. Several wake up 9:50 am, and getting ready for classes in 10 minutes is a feat that they master quickly.

      There is a tradition at every engineering college when it comes to assignments. No one does anything right before the day of submission. Only a couple of students in a class, at most, complete the assignment. The night before submission day, these people become celebrities, as everyone visits their rooms for their notes. Their completed work is religiously passed around till morning, by when everyone completes the assignment. And at the class, everyone promptly submits. The teacher knows what has happened most of the time, because a mistake in one notebook will be found in all other notebooks in exactly the same place. This thing also happens when it comes to our exams. All Indian colleges follow the semester pattern, with the exception of a few South Indian colleges, where exams are held annually. Now the semester pattern has a few advantages and disadvantages. One advantage is that exams are held only twice a year. That means most of us don't study till a couple of weeks before exam. And when we are not able to study everything in that short time, we say that there wasn't enough time for preparation. What we don't realize is that we all have ample time, but we mostly waste it.

     There is another thing that every engineering student will agree to. And that is that time flies very fast between semesters and we don't realize that our four years at the college is over. When we come in as freshers we think we have four whole years to spend here before we can get out. But those four years just slip by. We get so immersed in college life that we don't see what's happening, and before long we are packing our bags to leave, wishing we had used our time here better.

Proxy

        What comes into your minds when you here this word? All of you who access porn online might have had to use this thing one time or the other. The word proxy to an Indian Engineer means two things, both of which are equally important. The first meaning is the internet one, ie, proxy websites which allow us to view those sites which are otherwise banned in an area by changing our IP address. Without proxy websites, an engineer's hostel life becomes very boring. I mean, how long can you stick to Youtube and Facebook? You can't chat with someone the whole night long. Yes, you can, but not everyone. Something is needed to spice things up. Enter porn websites. Usually, such websites are banned in University servers. If you have your own internet connection through a dongle, then you don't have a problem. Otherwise, you have to use a proxy.
     
        Porn is not the only thing which requires proxy websites. The other thing which requires proxy is torrent downloads. Torrent for a student living in an engineering hostel is a vital pipeline which delivers movies, TV shows, games, more porn, music- you name it and it is there. But all this means huge data transfers, and after a few months, most colleges block torrent websites too. To continue to avail this wonderful source of entertainment, a proxy is hence used.
   
         Enough about this internet 'wala' proxy. What is wala? It is a Hindi word, and you can hear it in India, used by the local population as if it is an English word. It is basically used to denote association to something. Anyways, the other type of proxy that I want to talk about is far more important than the internet one. This proxy is the one where students get attendance in class even when they are not present. In Indian colleges, attendance in classes is used to award some internal marks in a subject every semester. Hence teachers keep a record of students present in each class. Obviously, you can't attend all classes everyday. No one can. It is just not possible if you are studying engineering. So you have to resort to bunking classes. I will talk about that in later posts. So what do you do if you want to bunk and attend classes at the same time? You make clones of yourself. No wait...you are not Dr.Manhattan. So you ask your friends to respond in class when the teacher calls out your roll number. If you are lucky, then the teacher won't notice. If you are caught, then things can get ugly. Whatever be the case that's how things work in an engineering college in India.

Here I am :D

                     I never knew starting a blog can be this easy and frustrating at the same time! I just couldn't get an available name!. Just about every random name seemed to be taken. It made me think just how many people there are, doing the same thing as me. Having the same set of problems as I do.

                     Now coming to why I decided all of a sudden to start a blog. There are a few reasons, which you all will come to know in the subsequent posts. The primary reason, however is that I want people to get a real glimpse into the things it takes to become an engineer. By the way, I am an engineering student in a private Indian University. Whoa! that is not a good combination at all, you might say. Confused? Well...Being an engineer in a country which already produces more than a million engineers every year is not really good. Unless of-course, if you are from the top layer of institutions in the country then you don't have a problem. For scores of others, graduating in engineering from unknown colleges in India can often prove to be a very bad career decision.
                      Anyways, see you tomorrow. I am an Engineer. :)