I DON'T WANNA BE AN ENGINEER
A terrifying world where each hour is a nightmare.Demons in formal attire pay regular visits,and the last thing you may remember before the melodious lullaby drags you to sleep maybe a long and hideous equation swarmed with ancient Greek alphabets.And they shall occupy all your memory locations,consuming them gradually until one fine April morning when everything you can think of appears before you as 1s and 0s.And then,as tiring night outs frequent,as sleep becomes luxury,as even a stroll to the canteen with friends to enjoy your share in that small cup of tea becomes an impossible dream...you may want to throw that 5 kilogram weight of an engineering mechanics textbook out of the window and run away from the god forsaken place...And so the truth remains:if there was another bachelors degree course which can provide job opportunities as much as B.Tech does,most of us would have been somewhere else by now.
Before Kreyzig drove us crazy,before Shames pushed us in to this damned haven of shame,all of us would have had dreams of a fruitful college life.I don't intend to prophesy the ill effects of a choice which we made 3 years back.Yet,respecting the conclusions of my predecessors whose ingenuity and farsightedness guided my conscience to accept certain facts,I cannot but convey these thoughts which still disturbs me.Among the hundreds of engineers in the making who I know of,there are indeed dozens of great dancers,poets,orators and philosophers...National Institute of Technology not only has great engineers,but also unfathomable talent in numerous fields;And in majority of the cases,talent remains dormant inside them during a period which is obviously the most vibrant in their lives,just like the sleepy heads trapped inside classrooms.Amid boring lectures and an unnecessary evil called continuous evaluation,the heavenly gift that resides in some of us are suppressed.By the time most of the engineers realize that they deserve better than to wither in front of a computer,they find it impossible to turn back;or as an engineer would have said.....a deadlock.
There are many who came here with a dream,and it's good to know that atleast some of them were successful in their pursuit till now.I,like any other NITian,will feel proud if this place breeds Abdul Kalams and Madhavan Nairs.But just because our education system welcomes only doctors and engineers,it doesn't mean that every kid who can count and apply some logic should end up here.Here,three legged monsters or toothed freaks await them(transistors and gears...hope i didn't lead you wrong).Imagine the loss for millions of Indians if Chetan Bhagat had decided to sacrifice his love for literature to take up an engineering profession.I guess it was that 5 point GPA which finally showed him the way.
And speaking about GPA,I think it directly measures the number of useful hours which somebody can waste in front of those thick paperback textbooks.Those with the audacity to engage in activities that really interests them,suffer from an accute shortage of attendance and GPA.Therefore,you can't measure the genius of a guy by measuring his GPA.After all,here the assessment is confined to the evaluation of memorizing capability and speed.I hope I don't have to tell you about the grotesque face faculties and other members of the elite community puts forth when we tell them our GPA.And sometimes we get to see the kind of smile which the prison guards force at murderers.You may be a vociferous orator,a gifted photographer or even a fantastic poet,but most of the times you are rated as a nasty 6 pointer...or you can hear them whispering to each other.."The kid has got a back paper in...".Atleast some of us would have wanted to look those people in the eye and say,"Why the fuck do you care?"
If noise still dominates the SNR when you think of engineering ,then it's time to do some troubleshooting.If high suicide rates in engineering colleges(Alas!NITC has also made it's mark on this aspect) doesn't speak for itself,then we have to get our own processors to think and solve this problem once and forever(and we are all problem solvers...aren't we?).Rather than being satisfied with an ordinary job which the dept. of training and placement dumps on us,why can't we go in search of a world where we are truly happy.A world so far away that the three legged monsters cannot get us.A world where our limbs are not tied by those abhorrent copper coils.Let us gain inspiration from the first world nations where people do what they love..so that they can love what they do.Let us bring out the adventurers and performers in us,rather than being the caged birds destined to sing of the world outside.
A cousin of mine once introduced me to the official photographer of his marriage ceremony.He was a professional.The youth who ran around the place collecting rare snaps in his camera,and cracking hilarious jokes to all the people he met,was the happiest person I have ever seen,or so it appears.He happened to be my cousin's classmate in CET,and it turns out that he was one of the university toppers in Electronics and Communications then.When I asked him why i found him behind a canon DSLR rather than as an analyst of T.I.,he answered...without losing that zealous smile which he carried around with him like the camera,
"I think I am happier this way...and I don't wanna be an engineer"
There are many who came here with a dream,and it's good to know that atleast some of them were successful in their pursuit till now.I,like any other NITian,will feel proud if this place breeds Abdul Kalams and Madhavan Nairs.But just because our education system welcomes only doctors and engineers,it doesn't mean that every kid who can count and apply some logic should end up here.Here,three legged monsters or toothed freaks await them(transistors and gears...hope i didn't lead you wrong).Imagine the loss for millions of Indians if Chetan Bhagat had decided to sacrifice his love for literature to take up an engineering profession.I guess it was that 5 point GPA which finally showed him the way.
And speaking about GPA,I think it directly measures the number of useful hours which somebody can waste in front of those thick paperback textbooks.Those with the audacity to engage in activities that really interests them,suffer from an accute shortage of attendance and GPA.Therefore,you can't measure the genius of a guy by measuring his GPA.After all,here the assessment is confined to the evaluation of memorizing capability and speed.I hope I don't have to tell you about the grotesque face faculties and other members of the elite community puts forth when we tell them our GPA.And sometimes we get to see the kind of smile which the prison guards force at murderers.You may be a vociferous orator,a gifted photographer or even a fantastic poet,but most of the times you are rated as a nasty 6 pointer...or you can hear them whispering to each other.."The kid has got a back paper in...".Atleast some of us would have wanted to look those people in the eye and say,"Why the fuck do you care?"
If noise still dominates the SNR when you think of engineering ,then it's time to do some troubleshooting.If high suicide rates in engineering colleges(Alas!NITC has also made it's mark on this aspect) doesn't speak for itself,then we have to get our own processors to think and solve this problem once and forever(and we are all problem solvers...aren't we?).Rather than being satisfied with an ordinary job which the dept. of training and placement dumps on us,why can't we go in search of a world where we are truly happy.A world so far away that the three legged monsters cannot get us.A world where our limbs are not tied by those abhorrent copper coils.Let us gain inspiration from the first world nations where people do what they love..so that they can love what they do.Let us bring out the adventurers and performers in us,rather than being the caged birds destined to sing of the world outside.
A cousin of mine once introduced me to the official photographer of his marriage ceremony.He was a professional.The youth who ran around the place collecting rare snaps in his camera,and cracking hilarious jokes to all the people he met,was the happiest person I have ever seen,or so it appears.He happened to be my cousin's classmate in CET,and it turns out that he was one of the university toppers in Electronics and Communications then.When I asked him why i found him behind a canon DSLR rather than as an analyst of T.I.,he answered...without losing that zealous smile which he carried around with him like the camera,
"I think I am happier this way...and I don't wanna be an engineer"
SNR is Signal To Noise ratio...
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