Admissions, Socialising and Everything else
Posted by Uma Damle | Filed under General, New Delhi, Quizzing, Shutterbugs, Uncategorized
After six agonizing months of NIFT’s lethargic tests, results, formalities and procedures I finally had my counseling a few days ago.I finally know where I’d be spending the next four years of my life and that would be <trumpets and drums> NIFT Bangalore </trumpets and drums>. I’d be doing Fashion Communication- better known as Communication Design-there.
After all the R&D on what seats go where (Its actually become a new hobby of my dad who is now planning to write a research paper on it), what was my best bet and endless disaster planning for worst case scenarios, NIFT unexpectedly opened four new centers and new courses at old centers this year.You’d think that the NIFT admin would care to put a news that big up on the website, but then going by the maintenance levels of the website I am assuming they aren’t aware of the fact that they have one in the first place. Until now there were only 36 seats for FC in NIFT so it was mostly out of my reach and my best bet was Accessory design-better known as Product Design-at Bangalore or Hyderabad.I was clueless about the new developments until they switched the projector on to show the seats available.When I saw FC seats in Bangalore I wondered if I was still in the speech-induced-stupor I’d been put into listening to the talk by NIFT people.Turns out that I wasn’t and I finally got the second best thing that I could have got in NIFT, the first being FC in Delhi.Although there was one single seat left in (stinking)Mumbai FC it was thankfully taken by the girl just a rank above me.May her soul rest in peace.
So now gearing up for four years of hostel life.I am enjoying my last few days of blissful ignorance about how bad it can be.I have been getting a lot of 10-tips-on-survival-in-tropical-forests-and-college-hostels from concerned family and friends. But I guess I am going to have to come up with some custom made tips on survival in NIFT Hostels soon enough.About how to deal with no dry clothes(which we’d probably have to wash ourselves)scenario, unfinished assignments(Ah not again.Had enough of them in school) and not-immediately-fatal-yet-barely-edible cafeteria food (Wouldn’t really mind it. Would help me shed some weight).
And for those people who think in NIFT the most difficult thing one has to do is deciding between halter necks and a spaghetti straps, a mighty senior put it very aptly on an Orkut community:
NIFT will not spare you any time for extracurricular activities.NIFT will screw up your sleeping cycle.NIFT will turn you into a pathological insomniac.NIFT will make you lose weight.
There is no glamour to NIFT. It is pretty regular. So cut your preconceived notions short , really short.
Knowing that I’d be leaving Delhi and a lot of people I have always wanted to know better behind, I’ve taken a leaf out of the books of social squids like Prashanth and have started talking to people leaving my comfortable spot from beaneath a rock where I’ve been hibernating forever.
So I had two really memorable meetings with Prash and the much-fabled Roshan Shariff-currently studying in University of Alberta in Edmonton,Canada.There was good food, some really kick-ášš movies, aimless wandering around in JNU and some discussions on everything else.Me and Prashanth finally got round to showing our Quiz, Crossword and CodeX question papers to Roshan. Although he got just about everything in the quiz right, we managed to stump him with the Crossword and the Codex.No amount of appreciation from anyone else could be as gratifying.Sporting the all-knowing and mysterious Mona Lisa smile that comes from making and hosting crosswords and Quizzes, in front of a guy who has made some of the most mind-boggling crosswords of our time was pure bliss-the sort that one feels only when they fit into that old pair of jeans that hadn’t fit for the last 3 years.
Then we had the historical first ever Pan Delhi Geek Meet at Piccadelhi in PVR Plaza. Although the meeting didn’t “pan” out as grandly as the organizers had envisioned-due to low attendance-it was still a very interesting meeting nonetheless where I got to meet some of the members of the geek community I knew only vaguely and two really interesting people from IBNMS who surprisingly had been through LuminaR and recognized me.The worst part of the meeting was that people had broken into small groups of their own with people at one end of the table wondering what the people at the other end were finding so funny.But we did have some nice discussions and conversation which compensated for the overpriced food.Hope we’d have more of these at a more hearing-what-your-neighbor-is-saying friendly places where the music wouldn’t be loud enough to drown everything else out.
These are probably my last few days of freedom before forever hence I am utilizing this time by doing nothing - the one activity that I’d be dying to do in a month’s time.
Have a lot to post a lot about everything else before I leave civilization. Hope I get around to doing it.
Bluegenemaid
<flotsam> Beauty lies in the lies of the beholder </flotsam>
Another RANT: The Story of Indian Students
Posted by Prashanth | Filed under Education, FIITJEE Pinnacle, Headshot, School Life
Really, the present happenings across my (older) peers’ lives sends jolts of electricity making all hair on my rise up, and has all the hairless parts goosebumped! In another few months, fate would get me close to something like this. It really makes me uncomfortable looking at people whom I thought were of the deserving kind in a helpless state. Really, Indian Education system makes beggars out of the brightest minds in the country.
Caution: You might see this post the same way you usually see rants on most other Indian blogs, especially on those run by students who are going through the toughest examinations in the world… Or you might see it as another perspective, another unique opinion, or perhaps something a degree lesser than a consolation to all those who have gone crazy in ranting so vehemently not just on their blogs, but in those phone calls better used as ventilators, those conversations which could more or less be addressed as punches on a rice sack or maybe those moments spent in Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt…
Here it goes…
Thinking in depth about everything, education in India lacks the 3 big M(s)… Money, Mindset and Modernisation. These things are barely enough to bring out just a few hundred successful professionals each year with a potential of several million. lack of money is a big problem in itself. Lack of money means so many things… lack of good colleges, lack of sufficient infrastructure in those colleges, or even lack of good teaching faculty in the colleges. The few institutes which DO get money don’t stand up anywhere when compared to the international institutes. Honestly speaking, it is just the maddening admission intake ratio or you might say the filtering process with the least porous membrane that gets nothing but the best inside. Maybe it is the general intellect of the students which gets IITs in the top 100 ranks of the world.
How does this effect India? Due to the lack of quality institutes, the success or the money making tendency of students is concentrated in just a few camps. Because opportunities are so few, and everyone in the populous of a billion odd people have big dreams, especially most literate ones, attachment towards studies is totally lost. Actually, studying is something someone OUGHT to do in order to earn enough to meet the family standards, which disproportionately grows with the country’s average income. The result - desperation,hunger and a famine like state with people craving for drops of those few seats which can mean the difference between owning a 100cc bike and luxury car in India.
There is this trend in India that makes money vending machines to placed in just certain fields. Like for instance, this particular hour has the management guys making the most out of the lot. A few years ago, it was the rapidly growing software engineering industry (which are mostly test centers or menial job sites for the world’s largest software MNCs) that got maximum professionals. All this leads to narrowing down what a student might want to do. Now everyone I know wants to go for the management side after the COMPULSORY engineering course. After all, everyone worries about FUD. With an Engg. degree in hand, he is ready to mint quite a bit, just in case management, which requires any damned degree as a pre-requisite doesn’t work out. The slightly under-exposed or the innocent sort speak what they have in mind… “It would give me better placement!”. The smarter ones, who know people or critics like me are around, fake or artificially create interest towards management. In reality, it is that very interest that the Indian students have lost. Money can actually buy everything, even interest. If a child confesses that he is not interested in Engg., the family and the brigade of relatives have him hypnotized into being interested in that subject.
Really, I know so many people, even upcoming software engg., who don’t have a crumb of interest towards their subject finally ending up as professionals for Indian counter-parts of well-known corporations really complacent about getting a job that pays them a tenth of a million rupees. People fail to realize that it might be a lot when seen in Indian standards, but then it is cheap labour for companies like MS, which would get those drudging jobs else where at a higher rate. Indians have lost choice, taste and the will to opt for what they really desire. Socio-economic conditions keep true interests confined inside, and the worst part being that the student never even realizes that he inside a fake world world which he didn’t actually desired to design. He has a fake illusion of happiness and satisfaction which finally removes feelings like - “Am I going to do this for the next 30 years of my life?” nurturing similar mentality in the next generation as well. The children of the so-called big professionals in India grow up to be in a similar race for trophie made up of anti-matter called success. Its a vicious loop that has to be stopped, and it is not really impossible to accomplish that.
Solutions can be many -
*Availability of greater number of universities
*Larger allocation of budget for higher education
*Competence amongst Indian colleges to go ahead of others in the world
*More diverse corporations basing themselves in India
*Corporations giving out large scale projects amidst Indian minds which are more than capable to create things, provided aptitude is generated at an early age
Aptitude comes during high school, when the student dreams. Dreams can be closer to reality than anyone might think. Dreaming, pondering is an activity that can lead students to dig and know more about what they might be doing in the future. Here, immature kids at the age of 18, who know just a little more than the placement opportunities in different fields decide what they could be doing for the next 42 years of their life. Coming to think about it, how much does an average student know about what exactly happens in in any stream of engineering that he might enroll himself in? How does he know that he is interested in it? Actually, Indians don’t need to know that. It’s almost like choosing what pays the most here. Finally, what you get to see here is brainy kids turning into menially productive mugpots, in time-lapse cinematography. And frankly speaking, I really don’t enjoy any bit of that show…
Oops… A Gross error!
Posted by Uma Damle | Filed under General, Headshot, Humour
IPL matches with their unexpected outcomes and twists and turns manage to befuddle and wrong foot even some of the most seasoned commentators by the look of it. Here is a screen shot from http://www.cricinfo.com live commentary section from yesterday’s Mumbai vs. Delhi match (Didn’t bother with those fancy and lame team names).Some unfortunate typo this was 
For the nincompoops reading this, the correct word was shot.
Bluegenemaid
