My Perception of IIT

Time: 9:30-10:25 am
Location: Lecture hall, Aerospace department building

Why I am here?..I m sure this question befuddles most of the NASA (Non Academic Students Association) fraternity quite frequently while sitting in the classroom, staring at the prof who seems to speak some alien terminology. C’mon that’s a lecture going on in IIT.. we r “supposed” to b brightest budding technocrats in India. We r “supposed” to b engineers in making that will drive the future of technology!!

Except few maggoos there are not many ppl who are mentally present in the class. If given the option I think most of us won’t even attend the lectures at all. I can’t figure out that how come the students change so drastically after coming to IIT. Sometimes its hard to believe that these are the same students that toiled hard and burned mid night oil before JEE, some were toppers at their schools. So how come these same ppl, after coming to IIT, lose the drive to excel??...what happened to their hunger?.. are they too much contended by their rare feat?..Does the society makes them feel so ? the feeling of contentment bounds them from being more hungry and work hard..the sense of secured future, in term of jobs and placements, checks their personality skills and they rarely care about it. There is not much that can keep them as hungry as they were before coming to IIT thus performing much below par with their real potential. Most of the students when they come to IIT are clueless about their future and its fair enough at that point of time. But the thing is they somehow gets lost in the sudden exposure to everything and a plethora of views they get from bathchmates, seniors or very rarely the faculty. The students starts loosing interests in the subjects and the most of the studies they do is self study only and it becomes a habit for them fo the rest of their stay in IIT. Its amazing to c almost 80% of the students just mugging a night before and passing the course. The whole acads part of a student’s life seems to b a second priority. The whole picture of IIT looks very gloomy from this angle and everyone seems to be shamming. This is not the case that its some kind of dark secret that only the students know. The amazing thing is being aware of all these things IIT has never taken it seriously. Only introduction of XX grades don’t change things much. I mean it looks silly to make students sit 80% of the classes or else he is not allowed to take up the exam. And the result is a student who is not interested at all (and sorry to say but the hard fact is IIT is never interested in knowing the reason for that!) goes to class sits in the last bench ..puts his head down and njoi his dreamworld OR just sit and do something else ( like m writing this stuff ). I think the problem s much deeper than wat the administration thinks, only forcing students to attend lectures wont help in neway but they should think how to raise the standard of teaching so that a student himself feels like attending lectures he should feel like there is some benefit …there is something to grab.. that’s the only way out. They have to think taking the big picture into account.

But all are not like this there are students who are still ambitious and take IIT as just another step in their ladder of career and they churn out as much as they can. These are mostly the students who have good mentors or senior who make them understand the essence of performing good in acads, participating in extra-cirricular and all other xyz things. The problem lies with the major chunk of students that are normal and don’t get the proper guidance in shaping their future. There should be proper mentoring of each students at for an year and that too very closely. I don’t know why the students mentorship program at IIT is just assumed to b an aid for anti ragging thing. It can add value to a student life to a much larger extend, can show the student the right path to chose when he gets carried away or is confused. I m not saying that everybody should be a nine pointer or will excel in everything but the point I want to drive home is that It will immensely help in raising the overall standard of the engineers the IIT produce. Its not just the acads but the overall pesonel development and other skills of the student that will help him coming out as a winner in every phase of life. In current scenario India not only needs technocrats but they should be responsible citizens also, by responsible I mean those who can lead and can contribute to India’s path to become a superpower