harsh in kinesphere

Love thy donkey work

“They expect us to become engineers through clerical work”.

-An ideal engineer

/*who happens to be my friend*/

Just like a good movie that has a climax at the end, each semester has the dreaded submissions /*No, it’s not kinky, it’s brutal*/, and just like the climax, submissions decide your fate for the semester. Collectively a month of each year is spent writing innumerable assignments, photocopying notes and question papers, memorizing the trivialities encountered during the practicals –all in the name of submissions. Oral exams are added like the cherry on top of a sundae /*to give it ‘the’ effect*/. All this gets translated to term work /* its professor’s assessment of the student’s performance throughout the semester, marks are given out of 25 for each subject +25 marks for orals*/.

The concept of term work and orals is mainly based on karma, and the professors love playing god. You don’t want to catch their eye, you don’t want to stand out of the crowd, you’ll make a point not to wear T-shirts that have one liners or anything that resemble alphabets that the professors just love to read.

They are Santas for the day, so when they ask,” How have you been this semester?” your poker face only succeeds in making them go ”Ho ho ho ho” with laughter.

Teacher’s pets enjoy immunity at this time of the year. During the oral exams for a subject say, Computer organization and Architecture they’ll be asked idiotic questions like “what does ‘PC’ stand for?” while the notorious ones are bombarded with questions viz,” what does ‘Pentium’ mean?, Describe the Unix architecture or Please explain Booting of the computer”. Open your mouth to answer and get jabbed with comments like,” Did you expect standard questions during Orals?” ……and you are one step closer to a nervous breakdown, in front the professors.

Those who can’t do, teach. Not these guys, they want to teach. They give 15 to 20 page assignments even when they know that the result will only be 60 /*that’s the class strength*/ identical copies of the assignment. The assignments are duplicated to such an extent that leaving the variations in ink color and handwriting, any word will be found on the same page, on the same line and on the same place in any of the 60 assignments. Made to scribble that doesn’t remotely contain anything that you’ll be studying for the actual exam. The hand keeps writing till the wee hours of the night, rewriting things that have been heard throughout the semester, without knowing, without caring, without living. As the days pass, the files keep getting fatter and heavier, but as Miley Cyrus put it-This is the life! The files get submitted and it’s the face value that counts.

/*ehem! */As the rumor goes, the assignments /*or the answer papers for that matter*/ aren’t read, they are skimmed at roll-your-eyeball speeds, so if you manage to write lyrics of your favorite song and add some relevant terms in between, it may even be considered as a model answer paper!

If you can’t beat em, join em, thereby everything gets decorated with clean legible handwriting, neat borders and diagrams. It’s for your own good and that’s the only reason to comply.