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Friday, June 24, 2005

That 'resulty' feeling ...

Do you remember that feeling ?
When you go up to collect your result ?

The anxiety ... butterflies crawling in the stomach ...
Suicidal tendencies ???

Today were the SSC ( Std X ) results for the Pune Univ ... and were of importance coz by bro was due to get his results today ...
From morning onwards ... he was tensed, harrassed by people calling to ask the results which he hadn't got ( results come out at 3 pm )
Anyways ... basically, he was pissed ... it was his first big examination results ... and it was showing ...

All his crying and self loathing eventually rubbed off on me ... and I was taken back to my time, when I got my 10th standard report ...

For all those of you who don't know, std X is the first exam we people give at the University level ...
At that age, it is the 'grand poo-ba' of all exams ... the very feared class to be in ...

Anyways, my results were pathetic ... considering how much I had expected and how much I had gotten ...
I had come home, miserable ... and locked myself in ... hating myself ... for a couple of days, without any social contact ...

Now that I think of it ... it was pretty stupid ...
I had gotten some 81% ... and I was feeling miserable because I had expected marks in the upper echelons ... 88%

Anyways, the feeling stays ...
Just before you are handed your results ... you study the faces and expressions of people who have got their results ...
Trying to gauge how badly you are going to get slaughtered ...

There are only two feelings that one experiences when one peeks at the result at hand ...
One of utter disappointment ... the lowest you have felt of late ... or the sheer exuberance .. knowing that you didn't flunk out on that extremely dubious paper ... or maybe got the grade that had eluded you for the majority of your lifetime ...

Anyways ... the crux of this blog ... is 'the feeling before knowing'
Something, everyone should experience atleast once in their lifetime ...
( which we guys do twice every year now ... )

And after seeing so many summers, have wisely realised ... that in the end, marks don't mean a thing ...
They're just a crappy way of expanding the boundaries between people ... victims of a crappier education system ...

One of my favourite lines, which I sincerely trust in such situations ...
Everything will be alright in the End ...
If it's not ... it's not the end ...

And oh, by the way ... my bro got almost the same marks as me ... 80.66% ... ( I beat him by 2 marks ... hehehe :) )
That, after crying the entire day about getting 68% ... and he's not the scholarly type ... so we kinda believed him .... :p
Idiot !

Sunday, June 19, 2005

When was the last time you enjoyed studying ?

And by studying, I don't mean members of the opposite sex ...
I mean, actual, practical, "hitting the books" kinda studying ...

And oh, by the way, I am back :D
( Encouraged by the fact that there are people actually out there who read the stuff I write about, I've decided to return ... )

Anyways, back to pressing issues ...
So, when was the last time you actually enjoyed studying ?
I can safely vouch for most of the people there, the answer will be never ...

Just gave the most pathetic exams of my life, just a couple of weeks ago ...
They weren't pathetic because I did not study for them ... but because, I did not, in the least bit, feel like studying ...

We had the worst subjects - ever !
And this made me think, why ... why are we tortured by the Ministry of Education into studying utter crap, which :
(a) : Has no significant use to us, in the least possible way
(b) : Is so outdated, that whatever use it had, has long passed its prime ...

The main reason, this happens is because, I think, we are made to study all this without understanding the application point of view of the entire thing ...

If we knew, where the stuff was applied, and where we could use it ... we would probably study with more interest ...

Instead, we get teachers who walk into the classroom - on the first day of college, and the first thing they do is, to scribble something on the board and speak in Greek and Latin.
This actually goes on for the entire semester ...

The practicals are mostly just copied ... and modified, and it is not until the last month before the exams, do we begin to understand all the stuff ... while hitting the books ...
But, it's too late till then ... the subject is dead ... and I don't think any person would even consider taking it up again in the future, just because of the initial fright - the entire thing gave him / her ...

This semester, we had some good subjects ... well atleast they 'sound' good.
We had databases, our first tryst with Visual Programming languages ( like VB / VC ), Microprocessors, System Programming ...
The syllabus of all these subjects were so bad ... that I don't think I want to databases again ... and I shudder at the thought of writing programs in VC++ with all the crappy MFCs and the like ...

We also had a subject called "Software Engineering" which was supposed to teach us how to 'design' software, before beginning to write it ...
This, I have realised, is a very, very important thing ...
But the way we were taught it, I squirm at the thought of drawing another UML diagram ...

The Ministry of Education is just doing the opposite of what it is supposed to - It is murdering 'Education'

Remember that famous T Shirt quote :
"I was born intelligent ... but Education ruined me ... "