Seminar!!

This post is specially dedicated to those of my friends, who have elected 'Control Systems' to be their final year elective. Don't ask me why they did. Don't ask me why I did. We just did.
As any self-respecting Electrical engineer will tell you, the most mathematical and thus the most abstract topic inside Electrical engineering is Control Systems. Here, things are not seen, nor even visualised, it is pure imagination. And it is way less fun than what it sounds like. But let me get to the point.
There is a project that every one must do, and a powerpoint presentation that all must "present", once every Saturday. Today was the first such presentatation, and this post is dedicated to that, ...ermm.., memorable experience.
It started off happily enough. In a small room with enough Gizmos to put Darth Vader to shame, and 2 AC's freezing people to death, 3 profs started to call us forth. The first few to go up had no presentations and the regular 'be ashamed' talk flew thick and fast. The fun started from the third person. This friend of mine was planing to work on "Chaos Theory". Sounds good. He should have been left at that, but alas. Apparently, the profs couldnot make out the meaning of a particular signal, and started questioning him. Thanks to some quick thinking by my friend, and a good-mood prof, the guy was saved.
Another of my friends got it pretty rough. He had an extremely informative presentation, which is another way of saying that he had taken all that he could, from books, papers, journals et al, and copy-pasted it on the slides. "To JU, from the students, with love..."
Only, the profs didnot find it quite so funny. The cross was pretty unfair, if you ask me. How can you ask someone to explain a diagram, that he was seeing, maybe the second time in his life? Or if the original painter was stupid enough not to have put labels every where, how are we responsible?
Their were other moments too, when one guy was told that he was giving the presentataion, as if he were reading the Sacred texts(he was oscillating like a mechanical cuckoo, :\ ), and another, when a friend completely lost it, and tried to define the 'Earth frame of reference', resolutely denying that there was any earth in the vicinity.
But the last guy took the cake. When asked to finish the presentation in 5 mins, armed with around 10 slides, he could reach only slide 3, before 30 mins were up. Worse, he started the presentation with a pdf, not even a powerpoint presentation. Being called a plagiarist was only half his problems, when he started to condense around 2-3 months of effort into 10 slides. He was supposed to speak on underwater vehicles, but it was the presentation that was left gasping for breath.
What a day!
But make no mistakes, I dont blame any of my these students, though I might sound sarcastic. This course is supposed to be the first and last in BE, where we do something on our own. But that's the theory. In reality, we are given a host of topics, things that we are hearing for the first time in our lives, and asked to come with ingenious things overnight. In 1-2 weeks, we must get papers pertaining to the topic, application areas of the subject, and be ready to answer questions that sound more like Greek, and less like engineering. But the worst part is none of these.
The worst part is, the aim of this course is not to do someting on our own, but verify other people's models. And if the verification is succesful, ... voila..., you just did it. And all of this,when we are bogged down by coursework, right up to our neck.

In short, we are drugged, tied, gagged, hung upside down, and then they wonder why we cant come up with Beethoven's Ninth Symphony just like that. Now isn't THAT supposed to be a cakewalk?

And people actually exist, who believe we are wasting taxpayer's money, when we leave engineering for good. I don't think that they know what it feels like to chuck away four year's of your toils worth right out of the window. Many of my friends and seniors do. Hope someone will take note, before it is too late.

Life@College

I do realise, folks, that I could have thought of a less boring topic than this, and definitely a better name to represent my post. But this happens to be my blog, and I get to torture you here, no regrets attached. Happy reading!

I happened to be reading a story a few days back, where a woman's belongings were stolen before a great war, and at the end of it, the lady traced back her stuff. The weird part was that she could no longer stand the sight of her stuff, and basically ran away from the scene. I thought it a strange way of being thankful to God, for getting back one's belongings. But when you think deeper, you realise, that the woman's belongings were associated with a happier time and place. Getting them back now would have stolen away her memories, the last refuge of a life that she cherished, but one that she had to give up. So, I think what is great aout something, or some place has not got too much to do with the place, but the memories we associate with it.
JU for most people is just another place with a large field, a place to smoke pot, a place where 'antels', 'batels' and such like come together, and so on. I can't blame them for taking it like any other place. But after spending a bit of time and a lot of life inside it, I humbly wish to stand out.

Many of my friends believe that I am a better narrator, when I am not narrating at all, not directly at least. Digression and sarcastic humour are more like me. So let me digress a bit. It is widely known, that I was once a student of Meghnad Saha Institute of Technology. Frankly speaking, I never played lots of games, nor was I an active participant in the college fests. But I just Loved the place. I dismissed my happy memories as just another lucky coincidence, before I met another guy from MSIT, who asked me about my impression of the place. I was roughly 27.5 nanoseconds into my lovely recollections, whence I was cut off in mid-sentence by the other guy. "Jaaygata puro *** chhilo". Well, I had not seen that one coming. 'What the hell?' thought I.

It took me a while to realise, that this guy had done everything that makes college life the great, hyped up extravagaza it is supposed to be. Games, fests, pranks, smoking up, and so on.
It was then that I realised that my impression was better attributed to my state of mind when I was there. I was preparing for a no. of competitive exams, was working my back off, and in general I had a strong sense of purpose. These are the things that I associated with MSIT, and my experience thereof was different from that of my friend.
My point is, that a place is just a place, but your experience of the place has got more to do with YOU than with the place. SO I thank JU, not for a beautiful campus, or lots of books, or saintly professors, or student blogs that sound like university propaganda.
I thank it for gifting me some awesome experiences that I could associate with the place. Debates where I sucked, drama presenatations which were a nightmare, workshops with seriously outdated technology, profs who can brag their way to the moon, friends that can REALLY make your day, people with whom you can have the simplest talks and still feel weirdly rejuvenated. Juniors that are nuts, juniors that drive you nuts, juniors that are sissies, and juniors that actually believe that their seniors know a lot more than them. Placement sessions, where one guy gets a job, and half the class make him prepare for it, and then lose no time in jumping with him once the results are out. Supple-s that are supposed to instill some shame in us, but end up putting in a lot of hatred, and a cheesy sense of humour. A society in itself, where you walk in with a lot of assumptions, and leave with many more, but in between, you grow up, atleast a little bit.

Yesterday, I saw someone complaining that we have grown up too fast, and the 'final year' and 'campussing' crap should have happened later. That is the essence of JU. An insulated world, where we know what happens when we move out, but we are still free to dream, each our own way. Where the mindless self-centredness has not become all powerful. A 'glass palace' which we all must leave, soon, but one where we are still living bits and pieces of our dreams.

Thanks, JU. Hope you had as much fun as we did.