(Bourgeois) Youth of our Nation - 1
When I was beginning my career in an IT company, I could see some brilliant people around me, musicians, writers, researchers, athletes, all going with the flow, in the currents of our education system.
And now somehow, a cliche dialogue from old Hindi movies comes to my mind, where the old "daadi" (who is presented to be a conformist fool) is lying on a "khaat" in a small hutty house, vigorously fanning herself with a hand fan, and spats (about her granddaughter to a city gentleman), "pad-likh ke kya karegi ye! kaam nahi karegi to ghar kese chalaega!". Though the words change with the day and age, sense remains the same, "padai-likhai" being the 'long term investment without any immediate returns' and "kaam" being 'a job that you get easily and pays you enough to maintain your standard of living'.
But as I was saying, people came through these on-campus job hording-recruitment where your presence is sufficient to get selected.
Some of my friends, from a different university, tell me stories how they sat in the interview and said that they didn't want the offer, requested the interviewer to reject, so they could sit for a different company. But the hiring HR had to reach his count, so hired them anyway.
What some colleges do is force students to sit in these tests and interviews. Because if, by any chance, the majority bunks the interviews, that company might not return next year - not what the college wants. And there are rules that if you are placed in one company, you cannot sit in another - because the recruiter doesn't want that.
But I hear this trend is now disappearing.
What made us so directionless and apathetic towards our own future, that we didn't care to upturn even a single stone? It was ignorance, and I don't speak for everyone, ignorance, or call it immaturity, or whatever that made mind free of such thoughts pertaining future. Anyway, its not the point.
I was back home, for a week or two on leave. I had decided to go and meet the CS HOD (Computer Science, Head of Department) of my university. That wasn't my department. But this professor had taught me a subject, and I had noticed that he was a little different, liberal, but in some ways eccentric. I still remember, on the first day of our class, he was engaging us in a discussion, what qualities we should possess, so as to be fit for the course.Then, it was so surreal to me. But now, I feel, he was trying to be philosophical, teaching ethics, epistemology etc. What was funny was how the students were enthusiastically participating. It was really amusing, students eagerly raising their hand, debating. The course was image processing, an elective, so everybody there was actually there to study.
"What are the qualities you are expected to have in this course?"
Silence. Right now, we all were on the same page.
"Discipline?", he said.
A feeble "Yes".
"What else?"
And then it began.
Someone shouted, "Helpful". We were in the fourth year, by the way. We were not the ragged-out-of-the-school-oil-in-our-hair-first-step-into-freedom first years.
"So, you should help your friends, and clarify their doubts?"
A coherent "Yes". What is happening?
It was bizarre, my experience was so different as a student then. These were different set of people, I was attending a class for the first time with them. Alas! I had been a frog of well, where existed an unspoken rule, that you do not respond to the one holding the marker, and show no interest in the what he says what-so-ever, until, obviously, he went off topic.
"Does this mean you will share your assignments?"
"No". It wasn't a childish "Noooo". It was confident, curt "No".
I tell you I do not exaggerate, the discussion went up to twenty something minutes and by the end of it, the whiteboard had all kinds of diagrams.
I don't think the students in that class were at all interested in ethics. And it still remains a mystery to me, why they were debating so vehemently (instead of, even if they were, indifferently) . But this article is not about condemning the finite. And thus, I go awry.
So I went to meet this professor, and told him that how dissatisfied I was in IT, counted myself among the zombies and sheep. I told him about my plans. I also told him that I was a 6 pointer and that it had started affecting my prospects.
In the discussion somewhere he said, "There are students here, 10 pointers. They top our exams. They will move forward, sit in CAT, top that too. Then, sit in the next one and top it. But they don't know what they want to do. They only know how to top the exams and that they do flawlessly. But they don't know what they want to do in life."
Is it true then? Do the young and brilliant minds of our nation don't think beyond grades and job prospects? Is the society we live in responsible for this?
I have a question - and not a rhetoric one, there are means for you to answer here -
Is there something wrong, if your life's ambition is to:
pay timely taxes and bills, to marry and get settled, own a car and a house, have children, and educate them so that they could also afford a car, a house, a wife and some children?
Yes, there is a second part also.
And now somehow, a cliche dialogue from old Hindi movies comes to my mind, where the old "daadi" (who is presented to be a conformist fool) is lying on a "khaat" in a small hutty house, vigorously fanning herself with a hand fan, and spats (about her granddaughter to a city gentleman), "pad-likh ke kya karegi ye! kaam nahi karegi to ghar kese chalaega!". Though the words change with the day and age, sense remains the same, "padai-likhai" being the 'long term investment without any immediate returns' and "kaam" being 'a job that you get easily and pays you enough to maintain your standard of living'.
But as I was saying, people came through these on-campus job hording-recruitment where your presence is sufficient to get selected.
Some of my friends, from a different university, tell me stories how they sat in the interview and said that they didn't want the offer, requested the interviewer to reject, so they could sit for a different company. But the hiring HR had to reach his count, so hired them anyway.
What some colleges do is force students to sit in these tests and interviews. Because if, by any chance, the majority bunks the interviews, that company might not return next year - not what the college wants. And there are rules that if you are placed in one company, you cannot sit in another - because the recruiter doesn't want that.
But I hear this trend is now disappearing.
What made us so directionless and apathetic towards our own future, that we didn't care to upturn even a single stone? It was ignorance, and I don't speak for everyone, ignorance, or call it immaturity, or whatever that made mind free of such thoughts pertaining future. Anyway, its not the point.
I was back home, for a week or two on leave. I had decided to go and meet the CS HOD (Computer Science, Head of Department) of my university. That wasn't my department. But this professor had taught me a subject, and I had noticed that he was a little different, liberal, but in some ways eccentric. I still remember, on the first day of our class, he was engaging us in a discussion, what qualities we should possess, so as to be fit for the course.Then, it was so surreal to me. But now, I feel, he was trying to be philosophical, teaching ethics, epistemology etc. What was funny was how the students were enthusiastically participating. It was really amusing, students eagerly raising their hand, debating. The course was image processing, an elective, so everybody there was actually there to study.
"What are the qualities you are expected to have in this course?"
Silence. Right now, we all were on the same page.
"Discipline?", he said.
A feeble "Yes".
"What else?"
And then it began.
Someone shouted, "Helpful". We were in the fourth year, by the way. We were not the ragged-out-of-the-school-oil-in-our-hair-first-step-into-freedom first years.
"So, you should help your friends, and clarify their doubts?"
A coherent "Yes". What is happening?
It was bizarre, my experience was so different as a student then. These were different set of people, I was attending a class for the first time with them. Alas! I had been a frog of well, where existed an unspoken rule, that you do not respond to the one holding the marker, and show no interest in the what he says what-so-ever, until, obviously, he went off topic.
"Does this mean you will share your assignments?"
"No". It wasn't a childish "Noooo". It was confident, curt "No".
I tell you I do not exaggerate, the discussion went up to twenty something minutes and by the end of it, the whiteboard had all kinds of diagrams.
I don't think the students in that class were at all interested in ethics. And it still remains a mystery to me, why they were debating so vehemently (instead of, even if they were, indifferently) . But this article is not about condemning the finite. And thus, I go awry.
So I went to meet this professor, and told him that how dissatisfied I was in IT, counted myself among the zombies and sheep. I told him about my plans. I also told him that I was a 6 pointer and that it had started affecting my prospects.
In the discussion somewhere he said, "There are students here, 10 pointers. They top our exams. They will move forward, sit in CAT, top that too. Then, sit in the next one and top it. But they don't know what they want to do. They only know how to top the exams and that they do flawlessly. But they don't know what they want to do in life."
Is it true then? Do the young and brilliant minds of our nation don't think beyond grades and job prospects? Is the society we live in responsible for this?
I have a question - and not a rhetoric one, there are means for you to answer here -
Is there something wrong, if your life's ambition is to:
pay timely taxes and bills, to marry and get settled, own a car and a house, have children, and educate them so that they could also afford a car, a house, a wife and some children?
Yes, there is a second part also.
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