Engineering Life
It's said that humans have seven lives, and you experience it each at a time. Ask someone who has taken up engineering and he'll be quick to retort on this fallacy. An engineer lives two lives simultaneously. Maybe it is because of this reason that a span of four years is often said to be an "Engineering life". There are a few unfortunate ones who end their life (literally and figuratively) during this period. But the ones who manage to live through this harrowing experience become an ENGINEER.
The journey begins quite early. A student securing decent enough marks in the last year of schooling is expected to join this stream even though he/she may have thought of a better way to spend four years of his/her life. Having someone in the family who is in this wretched background doesn't help the situation and the fact that you live in a country where the chain of command begins and ends with your parents pretty much seals your fate. So you end up doing what your parents tell you cos you are after all a citizen of India the land that gave you SHRAVAN (son of a .....). Anyway, after all the decision making sessions of which you are not a part it is finally agreed upon that you are going to join engineering.
Getting in is a task in itself. You are required to stand in a queue that seems to go beyond the horizon to collect something as timid as an admission form. After shelling out some predetermined dough you get to apply for various colleges and if you are lucky (read: have a good percentage) you get an admission to a college which doesn't require you to use every mode to transport to reach. The reputation of the college matters too but only for people who were born to be engineers. In fact these people are so into the whole engineering thing that the first word that came from their mouth when they were infants was probably ENGINEER. These are the same people you'll find at the beginning of the aforementioned queue. Anyway, you get into a college which asks you to empty your and your entire neighborhoods pocket. Ironic isn't it considering how much you've done to get into something you didn’t want in the first place. After all the formalities you heave a sigh of relief...too bad cos this was a cake walk compared to what is in store for you for the next four years or so.
The first day of college is one of the many nerve wracking days of you engineering life. This is the day when you realize that raging actually doesn’t have a definition and everything that you've heard from your friends is actually true. You walk with your eyes on the road probably b'cos you don’t want your shoes to be decorated by dog, cow and sometimes human excrement and most definitely b'cos you don’t want to see the face of your seniors. An ostrich applies this trick, it buries it's head into the ground thinking no one will able to see it and we all know how dumb an ostrich is...right. Even after making every conceivable effort you do eventually get ragged which depending on various factors is a 45 mins to 1 hr ordeal in which you are humiliated to such an extent that once released you look forward to the poo covered road that lies in front of you.
The first year for many is the most eventful year in an aspiring engineer's life. You get a whole new perspective on the word torture and the various ways in which one can implement it. One of 'em is a subject called 'Mechanics'. Now, I personally never found Mechanics tough but a lot of people do. It's a vortex in which if someone is unfortunate to enough to fall will find it increasingly difficult to come out of. Fortunately nearly 90% of the class fails (and you being one of'em makes it easier for you to explain it to your folks) and the reason for this large scale epidemic is usually Mechanics. The weird thing however is that after the initial "how could this happen to me" reaction everyone settles down when they realize that's it's actually a K .T . which by the way is very different from failing (yeah right)? So you get to study all over and appear for it again. A lot of students go through this multiple torture sessions while a very few have the luxury of being tagged "All Clear" (and no I’m not talking about the shampoo commercial). Oh...I almost forgot you are also made to be a manual labor on workshop days in which you are taught the art of carpentry and making weird metal shapes the likes of which you are never going to use.
By the time you reach second year you get acquainted with the way the whole system works. You become pretty much ready for anything the university might throw at you. But every silver lining has a cloud inside it; the cloud I’m talking about is VIVAS. These so called vivas are sessions in which you are verbally stripped naked by a bunch of professors who I personally think have a really miserable life. I mean how one can expect to answer questions which have absolutely no relevance to the subject. The point of these vivas I’m told is to make us look like complete morons. The first thing that pops in most of our heads when confronted by one of these questions is: Is that sentence grammatically correct? OR.... IS this even English? The fundamental mistake everyone commits is by giving too much into the question. The best ploy is to blurt out anything that comes in your head even if it's a metallica song. Ok I may be stretching it a bit; you can't show your vocal prowess in front of the externals. Leave it for Indian Idols audition. What I mean is half of the time the profs themselves don't know the answer, and as they are never satisfied with what we have to say (that very well explains the not knowing part) it is advisable to say anything that remotely resembles an answer. After you've been interrogated thoroughly you are asked to leave with whatever dignity you've left to face a teeming crowd of students who are yet to face what you've just experienced. All they ask is the kind of questions the external is asking and if it is necessary to carry an extra set of undergarments. You try to provide them with some useful information but end up instilling fear in those fragile minds and soon it is their turn to put their head under the guillotine.
Engineering life is not just about getting your ass whipped every now and then, you also get to enjoy some of the lighter aspects. First there are these 'DAYS'. From the very clichéd 'Rose Day' to the colorful 'Hawaiian Day' to the really absurd 'Paint your face day'. You get to experience a whole array of activities and maybe even enjoy them if you are willing to look past the "compulsory attendance" and "attend the morning lectures” threat. Also it is mandatory for every college to organize a handful of festivals. Typically a college hosts at least two festivals viz. a Technical fest which no one attends and a cultural fest in which one is inclined to bring everyone, even their pet dog. The cultural festival is the pride and glory of any college as the success or failure of this event determines its social standing. A lot of money is thrown in to give this event a grand look. Most of this money is acquired from small time enterprises that are suckered into giving us the moolah. It helps if the marketing team has some pretty faces which I forgot to mention we have a dearth of.
Once 2-3 years of engineering are over you acquire the uncanny ability to express everything in mathematical terms. Ex. The degree of stress on a student is directly proportional to the year he’s studying in, with the constant of proportionality being an exponential term. By the time you’ve reached the final year you find yourself formulating similar theorems. The aforementioned theorem though holds a lot of water and you realize this when you reach 4’Th year. The final year decides whether you’re gonna be mechanic or be the guy who brings his car to a mechanic. Apart from studying the prescribed syllabus you’re also required to do a project, the most difficult part of which is to decide what to do. After several brainstorming sessions you finally realize that you’re incapability to decide has not tarnished over the years and you’re still as clueless as always. At this juncture you’ve got two options:
1. Go to a reputed company and beg them to give you a project or
2. Pay someone to do your project.
And as money comes to the rescue (again) we’re reminded of the commercial viability of an engineering student.
A lil bit of math will tell you that an average engineer spends somewhere near 2 lakhs on tuition fees itself. No wonder these institutes are money minting centers. Come to think of it, it’s a shameful act; putting in money to BUY education. But one thing that engineering teaches us is to shove our conscience where the sun don’t shine. So after dumping our dignity, ego, conscience and every other human attributes down a meat grinder we are finally labeled as ENGINEERS; a fair deal don’t you think……
The journey begins quite early. A student securing decent enough marks in the last year of schooling is expected to join this stream even though he/she may have thought of a better way to spend four years of his/her life. Having someone in the family who is in this wretched background doesn't help the situation and the fact that you live in a country where the chain of command begins and ends with your parents pretty much seals your fate. So you end up doing what your parents tell you cos you are after all a citizen of India the land that gave you SHRAVAN (son of a .....). Anyway, after all the decision making sessions of which you are not a part it is finally agreed upon that you are going to join engineering.
Getting in is a task in itself. You are required to stand in a queue that seems to go beyond the horizon to collect something as timid as an admission form. After shelling out some predetermined dough you get to apply for various colleges and if you are lucky (read: have a good percentage) you get an admission to a college which doesn't require you to use every mode to transport to reach. The reputation of the college matters too but only for people who were born to be engineers. In fact these people are so into the whole engineering thing that the first word that came from their mouth when they were infants was probably ENGINEER. These are the same people you'll find at the beginning of the aforementioned queue. Anyway, you get into a college which asks you to empty your and your entire neighborhoods pocket. Ironic isn't it considering how much you've done to get into something you didn’t want in the first place. After all the formalities you heave a sigh of relief...too bad cos this was a cake walk compared to what is in store for you for the next four years or so.
The first day of college is one of the many nerve wracking days of you engineering life. This is the day when you realize that raging actually doesn’t have a definition and everything that you've heard from your friends is actually true. You walk with your eyes on the road probably b'cos you don’t want your shoes to be decorated by dog, cow and sometimes human excrement and most definitely b'cos you don’t want to see the face of your seniors. An ostrich applies this trick, it buries it's head into the ground thinking no one will able to see it and we all know how dumb an ostrich is...right. Even after making every conceivable effort you do eventually get ragged which depending on various factors is a 45 mins to 1 hr ordeal in which you are humiliated to such an extent that once released you look forward to the poo covered road that lies in front of you.
The first year for many is the most eventful year in an aspiring engineer's life. You get a whole new perspective on the word torture and the various ways in which one can implement it. One of 'em is a subject called 'Mechanics'. Now, I personally never found Mechanics tough but a lot of people do. It's a vortex in which if someone is unfortunate to enough to fall will find it increasingly difficult to come out of. Fortunately nearly 90% of the class fails (and you being one of'em makes it easier for you to explain it to your folks) and the reason for this large scale epidemic is usually Mechanics. The weird thing however is that after the initial "how could this happen to me" reaction everyone settles down when they realize that's it's actually a K .T . which by the way is very different from failing (yeah right)? So you get to study all over and appear for it again. A lot of students go through this multiple torture sessions while a very few have the luxury of being tagged "All Clear" (and no I’m not talking about the shampoo commercial). Oh...I almost forgot you are also made to be a manual labor on workshop days in which you are taught the art of carpentry and making weird metal shapes the likes of which you are never going to use.
By the time you reach second year you get acquainted with the way the whole system works. You become pretty much ready for anything the university might throw at you. But every silver lining has a cloud inside it; the cloud I’m talking about is VIVAS. These so called vivas are sessions in which you are verbally stripped naked by a bunch of professors who I personally think have a really miserable life. I mean how one can expect to answer questions which have absolutely no relevance to the subject. The point of these vivas I’m told is to make us look like complete morons. The first thing that pops in most of our heads when confronted by one of these questions is: Is that sentence grammatically correct? OR.... IS this even English? The fundamental mistake everyone commits is by giving too much into the question. The best ploy is to blurt out anything that comes in your head even if it's a metallica song. Ok I may be stretching it a bit; you can't show your vocal prowess in front of the externals. Leave it for Indian Idols audition. What I mean is half of the time the profs themselves don't know the answer, and as they are never satisfied with what we have to say (that very well explains the not knowing part) it is advisable to say anything that remotely resembles an answer. After you've been interrogated thoroughly you are asked to leave with whatever dignity you've left to face a teeming crowd of students who are yet to face what you've just experienced. All they ask is the kind of questions the external is asking and if it is necessary to carry an extra set of undergarments. You try to provide them with some useful information but end up instilling fear in those fragile minds and soon it is their turn to put their head under the guillotine.
Engineering life is not just about getting your ass whipped every now and then, you also get to enjoy some of the lighter aspects. First there are these 'DAYS'. From the very clichéd 'Rose Day' to the colorful 'Hawaiian Day' to the really absurd 'Paint your face day'. You get to experience a whole array of activities and maybe even enjoy them if you are willing to look past the "compulsory attendance" and "attend the morning lectures” threat. Also it is mandatory for every college to organize a handful of festivals. Typically a college hosts at least two festivals viz. a Technical fest which no one attends and a cultural fest in which one is inclined to bring everyone, even their pet dog. The cultural festival is the pride and glory of any college as the success or failure of this event determines its social standing. A lot of money is thrown in to give this event a grand look. Most of this money is acquired from small time enterprises that are suckered into giving us the moolah. It helps if the marketing team has some pretty faces which I forgot to mention we have a dearth of.
Once 2-3 years of engineering are over you acquire the uncanny ability to express everything in mathematical terms. Ex. The degree of stress on a student is directly proportional to the year he’s studying in, with the constant of proportionality being an exponential term. By the time you’ve reached the final year you find yourself formulating similar theorems. The aforementioned theorem though holds a lot of water and you realize this when you reach 4’Th year. The final year decides whether you’re gonna be mechanic or be the guy who brings his car to a mechanic. Apart from studying the prescribed syllabus you’re also required to do a project, the most difficult part of which is to decide what to do. After several brainstorming sessions you finally realize that you’re incapability to decide has not tarnished over the years and you’re still as clueless as always. At this juncture you’ve got two options:
1. Go to a reputed company and beg them to give you a project or
2. Pay someone to do your project.
And as money comes to the rescue (again) we’re reminded of the commercial viability of an engineering student.
A lil bit of math will tell you that an average engineer spends somewhere near 2 lakhs on tuition fees itself. No wonder these institutes are money minting centers. Come to think of it, it’s a shameful act; putting in money to BUY education. But one thing that engineering teaches us is to shove our conscience where the sun don’t shine. So after dumping our dignity, ego, conscience and every other human attributes down a meat grinder we are finally labeled as ENGINEERS; a fair deal don’t you think……
posted by Soham at 12:06 AM
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