I have now realized that happiness does not depend on CPI. There are many other things which affect happiness in life – health, relationship with spouse, kids, parents, friends and neighbors to name a few.
During B. Tech. days many of my classmates were extremely worried about their CPI. For many it was the only way to ensure access
to American universities and most importantly the scholarships there. I never had those aspirations and possibly because of that I never felt that type of pressure at anytime during B. Tech. program.
This doesn’t mean that I did not want to do well; I just couldn’t help it. It was quite frustrating for me. However, after so many years I have become wise enough to realize that life does not depend so much on CPI. There are many other things which affect happiness in life – health, relationship with spouse, kids, parents, friends and neighbors to name a few.
Honestly speaking, I did struggle with my CPI during B. Tech. which I passed out in 1989. It was in electrical engineering and my passing out CPI was 7.1. Am I a “success” story? I do not know. I consider myself to be a work-in-progress. I am still struggling (though I am doing reasonably well) and trying to build my entrepreneurial business. I believe in efforts. Hopefully the result will take care of itself.
Humble beginnings
Before I talk about my views on CPI let me talk about myself first. I was born and brought up in a very small tribal village at a remote location in Jharkhand. My village had no electricity and the nearest all weather road was approximately 10 km away. In the absence of any public transport we had to either walk or ride on bicycle to go to the nearest small town, a block headquarter, and then catch a bus to go to Ranchi, Gumla or Lohardaga. During rainy season it was almost impossible to ride even on a motor bike. During these days even getting any medical help from nearby town used to be a project in itself. Because of lack of hygiene in our daily life, we used to get sick quite often and many a times our grandparents believed on the local “Ojha” (tantric) will cure us. Luckily my father was an educated man and believed more on modern medical care.
I started studying a bit late (about 6 or 7 years of age) that too at home. My grandfather had arranged one teacher of nearby village school to come to our house regularly and teach us. After fair bit of teaching I was admitted to a school of nearby village in class 4. The school was approximately 1.5 Km away and we used to sit on the floor on our jute sacks and were taught by teachers who used to do part time farming.
When I was about 11 years old my uncle took me with him so that I can study in town. He was a lecturer in Bhagalpur University. My secondary school education was completed there. By this time I had proven myself to be a good student. I used to feel good at school because of all the recognition that I got for being a good and sincere student. However, I must admit, I did not quite enjoy the normal family and social life very much because of being away from my parents for a long time. I had clearly missed the parental love and guidance during those formative years.
My higher secondary education was done partly at Bhagalpur and then at Ranchi. At Ranchi I came in contact with some really good friends who helped me in preparing for JEE. I did not take any conventional coaching classes but relied on books suggested by my friends. However I could manage to get good AIR ranking securing a seat in Electrical Engineering B. Tech program at IIT Kanpur. Thanks to my friends Rajesh Ranjan and Manoj Roy for extraordinary help without which I could not have cracked JEE.
I had good AIR. I tried, but could not get A’s in courses at IITK
Now I was at IIT Kanpur, a shy person with no confidence to engage in good conversation in English and used to feel a bit awkward in many social occasions. Clearly my confidence was at its lowest which was compounded by just enough monetary support from my parents. Thanks to the Merit-Cum-Means scholarship which provided me extra support. I do not know what I would have done without it.
I tried as much as I could but could not get A’s. I had to contend with B’s, C’s and sometimes D’s.
The reasons for this are my failure in getting fully engaged during classes and, I must admit, not being able to comprehend many things being taught in classes due to poor listening comprehension in English in first two semesters. This was also because of my inability to interact and have conversation with my peers coming from different backgrounds which must have limited my ability to learn from them. Thirdly I used to take sports sincerely which, after so much of study, left very little time for social interactions.
Depression hit me once, but not because of bad grades
I used to get disappointed with my bad grades. Fortunately, I had no pressure from my family nor did I have ambition to go to US. I just wanted to do well in study and expected good grades.
However, I recall certain moments of my life in campus when I was really depressed. One such moment was in third year when my mother passed away after a long battle with cancer. The thoughts I had that time were that of despondency. I think some of my instructors did notice this and one of the Deans, Prof Raghuram, did have very sympathetic words with me. However, after those few moments of good words it was the same old harsh world again expecting me to show the similar performance as was expected had this bad event had not taken place.
I was able to handle this myself because of the strong value system that I had due to moral teachings and parental guidance. (I believed that whatever God does is for one’s good. One should do one’s best but should not have high expectations about its results.)
When I reflect about this incident and about similar moments of my life, I think my faith in the strong value system which was developed due to my growing up in traditional Indian society had helped to recover from those moments of sadness and melancholy.
The second incident that I recall is when I was in 2nd year and I could not appear in two end-semester exams because of illness. Thereafter, I was asked to reappear. I failed in one of them. This was for TA (Technical Arts-2). The reason was the nature of the exam. In this exam the expected answers were supposed to be somehow mugged up to be reproduced during the exams. I thought it was so un-IIT like. Students used to guess the likely questions for mugging up the answers and my guess turned out to be wrong. The instructor was also unforgiving. Due to this I had to repeat this course with junior students which I did not like at all and at times felt sad.
In view of this, I suggest that whenever an instructor fails some body it should be reviewed by someone independent and then only the decision to fail should be taken. In fact if students fail in any subject the matter should be investigated by higher authorities and the teaching content, teaching style etc of the instructor should be thoroughly examined.
One of the reasons that I never felt too depressed was because of my involvement in sports.
First sporting activity is always a very good stress-buster and so reduces the chances of getting depressed. Secondly my achievement in sports which includes gold medal in inter IIT meet made me well recognized in the institute and possibly because of which I never felt too isolated from others in the institute. Chances of depression are more if someone feels himself/herself isolated from others.
What is important is to identify your passion and run with it.
It has been more than 20 years since I graduated. I now realize that I should have paid more attention to developing soft skills e.g. conversational skills, relationship building, people skills etc. instead of CPI.
Many graduates do not pursue engineering as profession and extra effort put in by them at IITK to get high CPI, while neglecting to develop life skills, is a wasted effort. The fact that CPI is not very important should be instilled in the mind of these young students, their parents and the faculty.
High CPI, may indicate that the person is goal oriented. However, low CPI does not necessarily mean that the person is not goal oriented or that he cannot become a successful person later on. I was goal oriented but my CPI was low because of intense competition and various other reasons. What is important is to identify your passion and run with it.
I think IITK should emphasize the importance of developing of soft skills among students. These are the skills a person will find very useful no matter what profession he/she chooses after getting engineering degree. The academic institutes should realize that they are not making students just an engineer but as fully developed human being who can learn whatever hard subject he is needed in course of his/her professional life. There is no need to force them to learn something which they may not utilize in their life later on. There is no need to teach heavy curriculum. The purpose of teaching should be to make students aware of concepts. If any student later on pursues career in engineering he can always do self-study to better his professional engineering skills. The campus should cultivate happy learning environment with emphasis on creativity and innovation.
Sneak out and experience “life”
I would say there should be more social activities, sports activities, and cultural activities in campus. The time for these activities should be provided by reducing some curriculum related stuff. I suggest frequent arranging of cross country races and other sports activities which enjoy wider participation. To facilitate social mixing occasional group lunches, easy seminars could be organized more frequently. IITK campus is isolated from the city. There should be more efforts to make sure that these young students go to the city/outside campus. Group visits to nearby parks, zoos, cinemas should be done frequently. In short I suggest that the students should be encouraged to be part of the community, to have friends, to be engaged in sporting and social activities and the curriculum should be reduced to make sure that they have enough time for all these things.
IITD has the lowest suicide rates which I feel is because of the fact that it is not geographically isolated from the city which provides more opportunity for students to sneak out of campus and experience the life outside. IITD courses are also not heavy. In spite of this its students are no less capable or less successful.
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Sanjay Kumar is a 1989 B,Tech. and 1991 M.Tech. in EE from IIT Kanpur. His new venture, Kumar Consultant Ltd is registered in UK. It provides engineering design and engineering management services to rail industry in UK and India. He worked with Indian Railway in its Indian Railway Service of Electrical Engineers (IRSEE) cadre and for Delhi Metro before moving to UK in 2005. He believes that this decade in India and possibly in many other countries is likely to be a decade of infrastructure in which railway will play a dominant role and his company could provide well-designed products for the rail industry. The mission statement of his venture is “affordable transportation and sustainable energy for all.” He can be contacted atSanjay.Kumar@kumarconsultants.co.uk.
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