Ideal response

“It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education” – Albert Einstein

The thing that fascinates me the about this man is that he had a brain that weighed less than the average human brain! Came across that quote long back; smiled when I read it for the first time. But, I feel miserable when I live it everyday! The man is, as always, right. Engineering college was my childhood dream. I always dreamed that I would be able to do this, build that and every other crazy dream as any child would have. My path was pretty clear from the start. But after three years in this college, I feel that I am wasting my time and energy here to put a high percentage marks in my scorecard. I ask what is the use of getting 90+ if you don’t even know how to tune a pot and set the required voltage input to the comparator? They say that the marks you obtain will be registered in your scorecard and thats what will be valued for your entire life!

I knew things had gone way too far when a professor in a reputed institute asked me WHY I wanted to do a project instead of studying for the exams! I was not only disappointed, but also shocked to hear such a question from a Professor from an institution where research work is worshiped! He literally shook the very base of engineering by asking that question! You don’t learn it until you apply it! Simple was the answer, yet so complex that he lectured us to give up the “madness” of wasting time to do a project that will NOT HELP us in anyway. There were a million things that shot up in my mind that could logically conclude as to why we need to do practical work in engineering. But then I noticed we were standing outside a Lab and he was due to take up a lab session. I thought, heights of Hipocracy!

That is something I would call “ideal response” in this whole system. You mug up everything and vomit and score as high as possible. If you show interest in anything else other than the curriculum then your response deviates from the ideal curve and THAT is not at all acceptable! But, everyday we study that there is no way you can attain ideal response in any practical implementation of theoretical concepts. Then why do they not see it? Because they never paid any attention to the practical details themselves. They did mug it up, but never realised what it meant! So much for great engineers who teach the next generation of great engineers! But please note that I am not generalising it. There are a few cases there too who deviate from the “ideal response” 😀 . And thats the hope people like me cling on to!

I dont want to be an engineering graduate. I want to be an Engineer. And, for those who know, there is all the difference in the world between them! I hope the IEEE chapter and the team will achieve its goals. I would like to thank all the guys here and ofcourse the EEE department lecturers for their enthusiastic involvement in it. Now I so wish that I had been in EEE! Sad, but true!