As my first academic year in IITM nears the end, I have discovered that there are some things, which I would like to pursue for all my 4 years here (3 more). One important thing that you have to take care of if you want to make full use of your time here (apart from academics) is to prioritize. I and my friends have had a lot of discussions on this. You can’t keep on trying stuff till 4 years get over and there is nothing you have gained. I am of the view that all the trying should be restricted to a maximum of 1 year, and then you should prioritize, pick and practice (wow! I came up with a 3P prescription………make that 4P). I have made a list of 4 things that I am going to pursue over the next 4 years – music, football, quizzing, and LitSoc in general.
Till now, I have always played music alone, which is interesting, but not half as much as fun as when you play in a group. When you play solo, you don’t need to take care of coordination, volumes of each instrument, tuning, and other things, which are very crucial when you play in a band. It is also a lot of fun when you play in a band, the late night practices, grub sessions, and the general banter (in insti lingo- farting) in between practices. Here I discovered the joy of playing with other people, and I want to do that for the next 3 years also.
I think it was around class 11 when I gradually shifted from cricket to football. I do play cricket occasionally, but if you ask me to pick one of them, it will always be football. Even in my JEE days, I played casual football quite regularly. When I came here, I saw that I wasn’t very bad compared to others, so I started playing here too. I bought my first football boots after coming here (and have already worn out 2 pairs here). I got through the NSO selections (which by the way is a very big farce) and made it to the hostel team, which ensured that I played football almost every day. I plan to keep playing football till I can, and am going to try to get into the insti team next year, as I heard that both the left wingers are passing out this year.
Quizzing for me starts way back, in 3rd standard where I was gifted the whole set of Bournvita Quiz books by my parents. I was a big fan of the show when it used to be good (and when it used to be quiz, before it became a talent show) and it was like a religion – watching it on TV at 12 on a Sunday. Throughout my school days, I quizzed and enjoyed quizzing, and I carried that enthusiasm into college, and though the quizzing style here is very different from what we had in school, I still enjoy quizzing here. Recently I put up a quiz of 15 questions for the Quiz Club Meet, and my questions were appreciated (though almost all of them were very easily answered).
LitSoc – Here is one thing that I realized very late into my 2nd semester, quite recently. I had planned to pursue my other 3 interests even before coming here, but LitSoc is one thing that caught my attention and made me interested in it. For the uninitiated, LitSoc is the inter-hostel trophy for LITerary and SOCial events. Competition has always thrilled me, and I thrive on the competitive spirit, bordering on RGing (there simply is no non-insti lingo word for this, so please forgive me). So I thoroughly enjoyed the competition between different hostels, and was disappointed even more to lose it to a rival hostel (and later, even lost the 2nd position). I have decided that next year onwards, I will work towards getting the LitSoc trophy back to where it belongs (we have been winning it for 3 years, before this year).
Showing posts with label quizzing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label quizzing. Show all posts
Quizzes
Before I had come here, quizzes meant a lot of fun. A guy asking random stuff about some guy who did something which is completely unrelated to what he eventually became famous for, was awesome fun for me, and I could participate (or watch) a quiz all day long. In 11th and 12th, I used to surf all these online quiz blogs, and I, along with a friend (and later another friend) started one here, though it died very soon, because of the pressure of studies in the latter half of 12th. Fortunately, here I have a lot of opportunities to pursue this passion of mine. But all this is history. Now, tell me that a quiz is coming up, and instead of jumping up and down with joy, googling, wikiing (and rereading the H2G2), I will probably ask you if you are sure, and then again, and then again............. and after that, when I am positively sure that you are right, I will remove the dust off my books, pick them up and start studying, stop sleeping in class, and ....... oh yeah, before all this, I might even die of a heart attack. You see, quizzes here refer to the periodic tests that they conduct to see how much we suck at a particular subject, and then give the best grade to those who suck the least. Honestly speaking, that’s not true for all subjects, but for most of them, this is the case. As you might have guessed by now, this post is coming from a guy who is in the middle of his quizzes, and has screwed up his first one badly.
I am not so much against the concept of 'quizzes', as I am against the way some subjects are taught here. I agree that a student of engineering might require knowing the basic concepts of quantum chemistry, but according to me, the professors just breezed through the syllabus, and I can assure you that more than half the people here would have just mugged up the formulae, vomited it out and forgotten all of it by now. And this is by no means an accusation, because I too am part of that fraction of the population. So basically, we spent 3 hours every week for 2 months, just to remember it for the end semester exams. I don't get the point of doing this.
But I can't blame this on anyone, because obviously the teachers teach with the purpose of making every student understand the concepts. It is probably our fault that we don't get it, and more importantly, we don't let them know that we haven't got it. No feedback reaches the teachers and hence batch after batch are made to recite Hamiltonians and what not, like parrots, and forget it soon.
Another interesting phenomenon that I have noticed after coming here, is that majority of the people lose the motivation to study almost completely. I mean, after slogging for 2 years preparing to get into this place, people completely lose interest in studies after coming here. I know that it's very clichéd, but it’s true. The popular reason is that once you come here, you have run out of the mental stamina that you put in for clearing JEE and you want to enjoy your life, and hence studies take a backseat. However, I don't agree with this reason. First of all, I don't think that something called mental stamina exists, and I don't think that you can get tired of studying after doing it for 2 years. That people want to enjoy life after coming to college, is also a lame reason because you can easily enjoy the availability of facilities and opportunities for extra-curricular activities here without it affecting your grade card, and there are pretty good living examples here in some of our seniors. The real reason for the drop in this motivation, I think, is the basic structure and method of academics. There is a very major and fundamental difference in the style of teaching in college and school – spoon feeding. Whether you like it or not, you must agree that we were spoon fed concepts, problems, theorems, their proofs and all, in school. However, here you are required to do a lot of homework on your concepts. In school, careful attention is almost enough to understand everything. In college, listening in a class carefully is not enough (doesn’t imply that you sleep, like I do). You have to do a lot of homework and come to class, or go back to your home and do a lot of reading. But the most crucial point here is that no one tells you all this. You are supposed to get it, like you are supposed to get the stuff they teach. Here, students lose out. Early on, due to lack of this knowledge, students start appearing lost in class, and then finally lose interest in the subject. This leads to students losing interest in academics, and just turning into high quality parrots.
I might be sounding like a big and monstrous hypocrite now as I, even after knowing all this, sleep in class and am not interested in some subjects. I won’t even try to defend myself. I caught on to this line of thought somewhere towards the end of last semester, and since then, I have been trying to develop a genuine interest in class, but in some subjects, am failing miserably. I intend to correct this as soon as possible, so as to make my stay here in college easier, and much more fun.
DISCLAIMER: All the views expressed in the post are solely of the author, and any suggestion/criticism/opinion/brick-throwing/hurling abuse is welcome in the comments section.
P.S. If you find this post weird, I tend to be philosophical like this at times, especially after I have done badly in a quiz. Don’t worry; I will be back to normal in a few days (assuming I don’t screw up any more quizzes).
I am not so much against the concept of 'quizzes', as I am against the way some subjects are taught here. I agree that a student of engineering might require knowing the basic concepts of quantum chemistry, but according to me, the professors just breezed through the syllabus, and I can assure you that more than half the people here would have just mugged up the formulae, vomited it out and forgotten all of it by now. And this is by no means an accusation, because I too am part of that fraction of the population. So basically, we spent 3 hours every week for 2 months, just to remember it for the end semester exams. I don't get the point of doing this.
But I can't blame this on anyone, because obviously the teachers teach with the purpose of making every student understand the concepts. It is probably our fault that we don't get it, and more importantly, we don't let them know that we haven't got it. No feedback reaches the teachers and hence batch after batch are made to recite Hamiltonians and what not, like parrots, and forget it soon.
Another interesting phenomenon that I have noticed after coming here, is that majority of the people lose the motivation to study almost completely. I mean, after slogging for 2 years preparing to get into this place, people completely lose interest in studies after coming here. I know that it's very clichéd, but it’s true. The popular reason is that once you come here, you have run out of the mental stamina that you put in for clearing JEE and you want to enjoy your life, and hence studies take a backseat. However, I don't agree with this reason. First of all, I don't think that something called mental stamina exists, and I don't think that you can get tired of studying after doing it for 2 years. That people want to enjoy life after coming to college, is also a lame reason because you can easily enjoy the availability of facilities and opportunities for extra-curricular activities here without it affecting your grade card, and there are pretty good living examples here in some of our seniors. The real reason for the drop in this motivation, I think, is the basic structure and method of academics. There is a very major and fundamental difference in the style of teaching in college and school – spoon feeding. Whether you like it or not, you must agree that we were spoon fed concepts, problems, theorems, their proofs and all, in school. However, here you are required to do a lot of homework on your concepts. In school, careful attention is almost enough to understand everything. In college, listening in a class carefully is not enough (doesn’t imply that you sleep, like I do). You have to do a lot of homework and come to class, or go back to your home and do a lot of reading. But the most crucial point here is that no one tells you all this. You are supposed to get it, like you are supposed to get the stuff they teach. Here, students lose out. Early on, due to lack of this knowledge, students start appearing lost in class, and then finally lose interest in the subject. This leads to students losing interest in academics, and just turning into high quality parrots.
I might be sounding like a big and monstrous hypocrite now as I, even after knowing all this, sleep in class and am not interested in some subjects. I won’t even try to defend myself. I caught on to this line of thought somewhere towards the end of last semester, and since then, I have been trying to develop a genuine interest in class, but in some subjects, am failing miserably. I intend to correct this as soon as possible, so as to make my stay here in college easier, and much more fun.
DISCLAIMER: All the views expressed in the post are solely of the author, and any suggestion/criticism/opinion/brick-throwing/hurling abuse is welcome in the comments section.
P.S. If you find this post weird, I tend to be philosophical like this at times, especially after I have done badly in a quiz. Don’t worry; I will be back to normal in a few days (assuming I don’t screw up any more quizzes).
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Tuesday, February 17, 2009
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