In the midst of animated discussions belittling the travesty that engineering was, I am often caught in a turmoil of emotions ranging from the lack of memories from that period in my life to the often repeated feeling of how gargantuan a waste that period of education was. Tonight I was witness to another such discussion, and I usually get a lot of breathing space because I am surrounded by EE grads most of whose concerns from that lost era fall into my deaf ears. So, as it is usually welcome, I don’t end up speaking faster than I think. Somewhere before I have written albeit briefly about the useless force-feeding of information I (and most others) received during engineering. The unfortunate thing is, my memory seems to hopelessly fail me when I try to color my points using specific incidents, usually leading me to be a silent spectator. So, even here, even though my attempt would be to be specific, you would notice a significant abstraction about whatever I’m trying to convey.
Ambitions were quickly reminded of their back bencher status from the first year itself. In a system where the worthiness of the syllabus was decided by which text books were recommended, and how many chapters were covered, what else could you expect? In engineering colleges where the job of a lecturer is apparently the last backup of the worst student, what dreams would you cultivate? Where an ‘ATKT’ basically decides your fate as the scum of the universe, what support do you provide to the fallen? Where a student’s attachment to his college is based on the great time he has had with his friends and not because of the education he has received, what nostalgia should the brain be subjected to? So, am I so wrong in forgetting most of the four years?
If engineering meant anything to me, it is the simple fight one can wage against all of the above; about how an individual can stick to his guns and in spite of what people do around you, you could do things your own way … and make it reasonably well enough to survive. If that’s an utter glorification, then maybe that’s what I need to convince myself that four years of my life haven’t just simply been washed away in the murky waters of mediocrity.
