Today, almost a month after the farcical FIITJEE experience came to an inglorious end, I find myself attempting to make a blog entry once more. I tried on the 10th, and I tried many times after that, but for some reason, I ended up closing MS Word each time. It would appear that I can’t even write insignificant blog entries anymore. And I don’t think it would be necessary for me to mention that I deleted all my fan fiction in March, since everyone who cares would already know that. Just a little clarification: I do regret it. The Internet equivalent of self-immolation is rarely more enjoyable than the actual experience. I’ll admit, a fair number of my fics were crappy and delusional, and their only vindication was the fact that they were well written – at least, I hope they were. And then there were those fics that I actually liked. Even now, months after the carnage, I feel proud of myself for having written them – mostly because, right now, I wouldn’t be able to write something fractionally as good. But I deleted all of them. Indiscriminate deleting of fan fiction may have a few short-term benefits, such as the momentary appeasement of misdirected anger, but nothing else, really. At this point, if I could undo the whole episode, I would. But since I can’t, there’s no point in dwelling on it. And it’s time to end this obituary of Kaiser Washington. (Ah, isn’t this the perfect time for Hamelin to play that poignant passage in Chopin’s Fourth Ballade?)
More on the farcical FIITJEE experience now. That was, after all, supposed to be the highlight of this entry. But I find my mind wandering, and all of a sudden I’m going into incoherencies. I could delete the last sentence, and this one, but I won’t. These two years have been pure TORTURE – concentration-camp-esque torture. It’s a testament to what narrow-mindedness and shallow, range-of-the-moment thinking can do to stultify the image of India’s best institutions. It’s not about preparing for the IITJEE, it’s about “cracking” it – as in, making test-taking a conditional reflex rather than an opportunity to exercise the brain.
There are teachers like Bandana, who expect you to think outside the box within the confines of a highly restrictive curriculum, and then sigh in exasperation when you do; then there are teachers like Janardhan, who, for a short while, give you the false impression that learning is all about the learning; and then there are teachers like S. B. Jha, who have long stopped pretending that the course isn’t more than a bunch of formulas and obscure concepts that students need to memorize unthinkingly. Throughout the FFE (the Farcical FIITJEE Experience), there was constant talk of how we needed to “sacrifice” those two years in order to ensure “success” in the future. Teachers told us, in a single breath, that IIT was the only institution in India that deserved to be called an engineering school, but that IIT wasn’t the end of the world; if, however, we thought were happy in another institution, it was only because we had never experienced IIT. It reminds you of Kant’s trash about the phenomenal and the noumenal.
But in January, when classes were officially over, and students were required to study all by themselves at home, I felt a lot freer than I did at FIITJEE. I could do things my way, for a change, without having to listen to teachers drone on robotically and meaninglessly about how anything less than twelve hours of solving problems mechanically was pointless. But that didn’t last too long. The board exams were conducted in March, and I flunked them (88%), because they didn’t mean too much to me, for some reason. Then I took the IITJEE on April 10, and suspect that I didn’t do too well, although I was loath to look at the solutions. Usually, the psychological reaction to the confirmation of a suspicion is far worse than the reaction to just the suspicion. After the IITJEE, I lapsed into a stuporous state of total inactivity. The only productive thing I did was to write that letter to MIT, telling them I was interested in staying on their wait list. They call it a letter, but it’s more like an essay. I have had some bad experiences with college essays this season. Many of my best essays proved pointless, after the colleges I sent them to rejected me. So it took me a lot of effort to write this essay for MIT. There is still light at the end of the tunnel. Let’s just hope it’s not my retina getting detached.
On a final note, I’m a lot happier than I sound in this entry. Oh, and I recently read The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. It’s a beautiful poem. Ordinarily, anything with a title like that wouldn’t interest me much, but this poem is excellent. Read it, if you want to. I know Nicky will.
2 comments :
I've given up trying to write an FFE-related post myself. You can never manage to capture the extent of torture, right? ~.~
'Concentration camp-esque' made me laugh. Because I just read something like that today in the eamcet book I'm studying from: 'Many students spend their precious 2 years in concentration camps like situation with a hopes to get a good rank in EAMCET. As if, whole state reels under the euphoria of the examination.' This was under the section heading 'Craze for the Exam'. (Disclaimer: The grammar and punctuation is not mine -_-)
...I, for one, sure as hell don't feel the goddamn 'euphoria' of the examination. Heck, I feel like my life force has been sapped out instead.
But I digress. You're absolutely right about the 'sacrifice for success!' part-- the teachers were, most of the time, just bloody parrots who never encountered something called 'the joy of learning'. It was only last summer I managed to shut out fiitjee's sacrifice crap and pull myself out of my lovely downward spiral ('Whee!').
The only light at the end of my tunnel is but a pinprick of light. I pray for the welfare of my retina, too. How's yours, btw?
I read the poem! I love how Eliot skips from ridiculous humor to poignant truths, using the humor wherever he gets too serious. My two favorite lines, which I unfortunately can't paste into here using my iPod, are 1)the sky being compared to an etherized patient (really sets the mood for the poem, doesn't it?) and 2) the one about measuring his life in coffee spoons. It completely captures how weary he is of.. everything, really. I find that it echoes my own sentiments towards life sometimes.
Wait, so the EAMCET blokes are comparing the education system favorably with concentration camps? That's incredible. I suppose they had to come up with *something*, in the absence of actual good reasons.
What I failed to understand throughout the FIITJEE experience, right from Ascent, is how we were expected to force ourselves to be interested in the subjects we didn't like. There was a kid in my class who once stupidly said that MPC was his girlfriend - but even as he said it, he was unconvinced. His grandfather must have taught him to say that when he was young.
To me, the light at the end of the tunnel seems to be the setting sun focused through a badly placed system of lenses (maybe Janardhan is the one responsible for it) that makes it look dimmer than usual. On an unrelated note, did you know that the sun sets faster than you would expect it to?
The coffee spoons line is my favorite, too. I'm going to read the poem again before going to bed tonight. :)
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