Wednesday 19 August 2009

Academic Evolution

A short while ago I realised that I had spent the last twenty years of my life studying. Now a lot of people might say that they spend their entire lifetime studying, so what am I going on about. But the fact is that these years have been spent in formal education, as in studying in an education system. I can actually break it down into three phases – School, Graduation and Post Graduation. The three phases were very different from each other and offered a unique experience.

Getting some numbers to put things in perspective, I am a little over 23 at the moment. So, for me to have spent over 20 years in some educational institution, it means that I have spent more than 87% of my life studying and I have almost an entire year remaining at the moment. This may not seem to be much for some people, but for me having realised that I spent over 20 years at a stretch studying, was a little unnerving. I honestly believe, and I think most of my friends would agree with me if I say this, I have probably studied more than what I truly deserve or am capable of.

As much as I would love to write about the different experiences at the three levels and how they affected my life, I have to admit that I am not writing an autobiography here, so all that is out of the picture. Instead, what I will try to write about is the differences that I have observed and felt in the three different education types. My life has pretty much been defined by where I was and what I was doing at any point of time, and invariably it was while I was enrolled in some institution. In fact, my life can be broken down into phases of Pre-School, School Life, Engineering, MBA, which is currently going on, and hopefully the next phase will be work and not unemployment. Pre-School is something that I hardly remember and whatever memories I have are quite few and are fairly vague. There aren’t necessarily any trends that can be observed, but there are differences in the three phases.

1. Class Duration – School had classes that lasted between 35 and 40 minutes depending on the day. Engineering had one hour lectures and MBA has one and a half hour lectures. While the length of lectures increased, attention span probably shrank at each step. Also, the appropriate window of time for entering a classroom expanded from 5 minutes to 10 minutes and finally fifteen minutes of commencement of the class.

2. Material Carried – School saw us carrying a huge backpack containing Pencil Boxes, Tiffin Boxes, Subject Books, Individual Subject copies (Covered and labelled at that) which made the school bags look more the size of an expedition rucksack. The number of copies gradually began to reduce in school and books almost disappeared from the bags as classes advanced. Covers and labels became a thing of the past and copies were replaced by registers. Engineering saw no books and very few registers. Pencil Boxes disappeared to be replaced by pens and pencils lying around carelessly. Scientific Calculators became an essential part of the contents. Books were rarely if ever carried, those too only for open book tests. MBA saw a different trend with one notebook being used for all the subjects. Laptops were a frequent addition and printed notes and cases replaced books of any sort. Presence of one writing instrument was more than enough as writing notes became a rare occurrence.

3. Writing Instruments – School started with pencils that were used to write with. From the red and black ones, to the lead changers and then finally the clutch pencils which are still being used. Pens were first used by me in class 4 and I initially had to use ink pens which made a considerable mess. From ink, I switched to Ceramic rollers and Gel pens, after which I finally started using Ballpoint pens, which I didn’t like too much. Now, it’s anything that can be used to write and there isn’t much of a fuss as I hardly write anything and it is more of scribbling or drawing just to pass time till the class ends.

4. Mode of Transportation – One thing that changed as I changed institutions was how I reached the place of study. During school, it was inevitably the school bus that took us to and from school. During my engineering, initially it was walking to college from the hostel, and then I had my own mode of transportation in the form of my car. Currently, it is public transportation in the form of the three wheeled auto rickshaws which I pretty much loathe.

5. Respect for Teachers – I think this has a definite trend. Barring a few exceptions respect towards teachers kept on decreasing as I grew older. Initially, teachers were quite respected but eventually in school, sometime around class 8 I think, most of the teachers started to lose respect. By the time I reached class 11 there were hardly any teachers who were respected and this continued throughout my engineering and is still going on. Some exceptions always cropped up though, teachers who genuinely deserved respect, but there weren’t many.

6. Class Timings – This is actually a little weird because as I went for higher studies the start time became late. Barring the initial years before class 5, my school would start at 7 in the morning (7:05 to be precise) and would end at 1:15. During engineering, classes normally started at 8 and we were very happy if the first class got cancelled, there were half days and full days, and some variations in timings, but it was quite uniform. Currently, my classes do not start before 9 in any case. I have no fixed timings these days and have a very erratic schedule regarding start and end times and number of lectures in a day. So, basically as I went for higher studies, order gave way to chaos.

7. Course Duration – The courses actually became shorter. School went on for 15 years from Pre-Nursery to class 12. Engineering was a 4 year course and my MBA will take 2 years. Either the capacity of my brain has increased or the amount that we are allowed to ignore or discard has increased.

8. Stepping Up – The frequency of changing classes and moving up after exams increased with time. In school, there were 2 sets of exams in a year after which one would move to a higher class. During my engineering, the course was divided into 8 semesters spanning six months each which contained 3 sessional exams and then an end semester examination. MBA has 3 trimesters in a year, each having midterms and an end term exam. Unfortunately the number of subjects that were covered and the thickness of text books grew despite terms being shortened.

9. Level of Effort/Indifference – Somehow as I progressed, my level of effort for each exam gradually reduced. In school, initially I used to put in a lot of effort, perhaps because my level of preparation was judged and tested by my mom, but eventually when I felt I was old enough to study on my own, my level of effort kept going down and the level of indifference kept increasing at the same time. My expectations from myself also were lowered according to my convenience and eventually my aim was just to pass and get 33%, anything above that was a bonus. This trend continued and Engineering was when I thought I peaked with my level of indifference and minimal effort for each exam, but I was proved wrong when I started my post graduate studies. Anyone who thinks an MBA course is tough is probably mistaken as I doubt that I have ever made less effort than what I am making at the moment.

10.Friends – I don’t think I have a dearth of friends, but I can definitely say that friends made at each stage have been different. I will leave it at that as I refuse to elaborate on this point.

The three academic phases have been quite different and have had fairly unique characteristics. One thing that remained common though was the realisation that I do not like to study and always look for the route with least effort before my exams. Next year my academic life will come to an end and I will hopefully be employed somewhere, which seems to be quite a scary thought. But, the fact of the matter is that I am quite sick of studying and though I know that work life is bad, I really think I have had enough of studies to last me for a lifetime.


ev·o·lu·tion (ěv'ə-lōō'shən, ē'və-)
n.

  1. A gradual process in which something changes into a different and usually more complex or better form.

    1. The process of developing.
    2. Gradual development.
    3. Change in the genetic composition of a population during successive generations, as a result of natural selection acting on the genetic variation among individuals, and resulting in the development of new species.
    4. The historical development of a related group of organisms; phylogeny.
  2. Biology
    1. Change in the genetic composition of a population during successive generations, as a result of natural selection acting on the genetic variation among individuals, and resulting in the development of new species.
    2. The historical development of a related group of organisms; phylogeny.
  3. A movement that is part of a set of ordered movements.
  4. Mathematics The extraction of a root of a quantity.