Mar 22, 2020
tw²: Mar 15 — Mar 21, 2019 | #12
The second week of COVID-19 Break | TWTW #79
Few Updates from Saturday:
M V Rajesh Sir shared a wonderful write-up from The Hindu editorial section (Temples of Critical Thinking and Debate — To be among the best in the world, Indian universities must be freed from excessive interference and politicization, by Sreeram Chaulia) that was relevant for educational systems to excel and be at par with other institutions like Stanford University etc. Here are the highlights from the article:
- Not a single University in India is featured in the top 150 world wide according to Quacquarelli Symonds ranking system.
- IIT’s and IISc’s are listed in the range between 150–200. Top positions belong to American Universities (Oxford, Stanford, Harvard etc.)
- Why are the top universities at the top? Mainly due to the freedom of operation. They are free from bureaucratic or corporate meddling thus effectively focusing on innovation in teaching and research — away from dogmatic thoughts
- These top universities are ideologically pluralistic — mix of left, right and centre among faculty and students.
- Top grade Universities are good at attracting and retaining talent. With high selection criteria, the environment for the diverse crowd (selected after a ruthless filtering process) enables intellectual endeavors. They incentivize publications and citations of research.
- The environment in these top universities encourage critical thinking, debating and writing abilities in students. They nurture the students with the ability to view issues through interdisciplinary lenses and challenge their own professors. This ‘horizontal’ relationship in the system ensures everyone (students and faculty) are equals in this pursuit for knowledge. In effect, studets are molded with cutting edge skills and job market knowledge.
- Alumni network plays a big role for the institution for governing progression steps. The ability to raise massive funds to invest in new academic ventures is vital to develop with changing times.
- In India however, we lack the ability to garner large sums of money to make valuable investments. Private institutions succeed due to its large initial capital.
- Regardless, it is critical to avoid politicisation ideological rigidity and nepotism to free universities from excessive interference and over-regulation.
- We need to strive to compete with Western Universities instead of settling for the mediocrity of low aspirations and ambitions.
- Government of India has Institutes of Emminence to identify quality universities and incentivize them to innovate with new programs, expand variety of faculty members and digital learning platforms.
- Though we have a lot of ground to cover to reach in the range of the Top Universities, despite our democratic setting that makes evolution a multi-decade long process, we can ascend the rank system though long-term vision and selfless leadership from where ever it may rise.
I could relate with a lot of these points. I have faith that MEC will reach a commendable spot within 10 years time!
Did I tell you, Farha got a placement offer from Amazon? Also, Nikita Uday got into Microsoft? Congratulations you two! They worked hard and cleared the bars. I hope this inspires many more women to shoot for the stars.
I had an engaging discussion with Kaumudi about Effective Altruism — How to nurture an environment of curiosity to learn rather than a system of regurgitation of knowledge. Here are a few valuable points we pondered on:
- EA aims to foster a community of budding engineers (or whatever they might decide to do after graduating — productive citizens of the world is more like it) who will enter the workforce with the aim of not only getting money and name for themselves, but also will strive to impact the world in a meaningful way, big or small. It will also get going a conversation about career and stuff, which Kaumudi feels is badly needed in our college as most students are running confused until the very last minute, at which point they will be forced to choose something or the other simply because they have run out of options and time.
- Highly focused clubs like FOSS is not inclusive of all as it is intimidating for beginners who think only experts are welcomed.
- Kaumudi was trapped by this thought process of thinking she had to be an expert to get started (me too). When she tried, she hoped for more help. To quote her words: “This realization is the wisdom that is born out of the poison of regret of wasted time”. She wishes others to learn from her mistakes.
- Teachers need to provide better support than just saying ‘LEVEL UP KIDS’ to invigorate our curiosity drive. Only a few teachers take the time out of class hours to do that.
- Abin and Kaumudi had once suggested an idea a teacher (via chit) to make the assignments more interesting by asking students to delve deeper into the subject. The teacher instead read it out loud to publicly mock them, stating ‘You all barely understand surface level concepts, then you want deep ones’. The point Abin and Kaumudi meant was to make it interesting, but the teacher felt offended based on past experiences. Considerin this, the idea of Teaching Assistants, though necessary would be difficult for teachers to mentally accept. Most teachers are indolent and happy with the present system of redelivering textbook content unmodified.
- The above mentioned point ticks off 2nd year students when they realize the core content is not fun. These students give up diving deep in academics and instead take path of least resistance to better utilize their time, like marketing or content writing for Excel (or even worse, nothing). At the end of 4 years of B.Tech, they are left feeling hollow and insufficient.
- Curious people loose interest also because the prescribed textbooks for core subjects are many, and tend to be big volumes that takes forever to read through and find the gems. Even if these students are patient and persistent, they don’t have the time to do so amidst 12 subjects a year. The field is vast, time is limited, testing boundary (of university) is within range.
- To fix the above problem, it helps to have Teaching Assistants (TAs) who go through the subject ahead of time and have a ground-up well nurtured understanding rather than blind mugging up. These people know how to answer the WHY question.
- But then, who will volunteer their time to teach their juniors along with the teacher in a semester? In the current system, there is no incentive for them to be selfless, and it is better worth their time to invest in themselves rather take it upon themselves to help their juniors. They have no obligations to offer a hand, cause no one helped them to get to this point.
- People who succeeded on their own (1) had external nudge to grow, (2) knew the people to reach out to, (3) had the courage to reach out. Not everyone gets all 3 right.
- Competition > Collaboration many of the times, thus creating a non-inclusive environment. The weak feel intimidated and thus never try because they think there is some inborn genius to strive for. This wall divides the two sects.
- Whose job is it to keep it inclusive? Everyone’s, believes Kaumudi. Career is only the beginning and one need support from others to climb up.
- Sometimes, a barrier between the beginners and the pro is important to avoid dumbing down concepts to accommodate the slowest learner at the cost of the growth of the top tier students.
I know a lot of confusing points, but the truth is, thats the current state!
I watched two animes movies today: 5 centimeters per second (a collection of small romantic stories) and Colors (a soul gets a chance to relive after suicide and learns to appreciate life. Indulges on the effect of prostitution, extra-marital affairs and forgiveness in a flawed world). You can find the same on YouTube (until an authority reads this and takes it down).
Sunday (15/03/2020)
Our Vicar advised us not to attend the Qurbana to avoid a public gathering, and instead, to pray from home. Goals for today:
- Complete studying 1 chapter for Cloud Computing
- Complete Flutter App Development tutorial
- Read a few chapters of ‘Who Will Cry When you Die’ by Robin Sharma
- Learn sketching/illustration basics from a tutorial.
The new core of FOSSMEC is planning events for the break period to engage with the student community. I had a 1.5 hour long discussion with the team about:
- Podcast: Rohith Suresh, Abhiram and Shreyas will release it by 18th Mar
- Comic Strip: Janice and Devan will share the work they have completed by this week
- Book: Kaumudi and I will discuss the content of the book in greater detail.
- Survey for final year students: Kaumudi and I will improve it in a weeks time.
Monday (16/03/2020)
Goals for today (marked in bracket with ‘D’ to indicate ‘Done’):
- Learn 5 modules of Flutter App Development.
- Learn a few modules of GCP Class on Coursera.
- Study Cloud Computing: Security needs
- Get back on track on my Data Science Track on Datacamp.
- Improve the status of the survey form
- Mettle Networks project work (Final year project work) Module 3 content.
- Plan out seminar content with Alfin using resources shared previously.
- Read the book (D)
Listened to Podcast Episode one by Shyam Menon — really fun content! I hope you feel the same after listening to it.
Tuesday (17/03/2020)
The podcast is finally out! Do check out the Instagram page for updates.
People are excited! I hope it is well accepted even after episode #1.
Wednesday (18/03/2020)
The episode is out! Woohoo!
Thursday (19/03/2020)
Woke up at 4.30 AM after such a long time. Morning exercise and introspective session was good.
The podcast appears to have been quite well received by many, but the common problems they mentioned were:
- Need better audio quality.
- Needs to be shorter.
- Needs to be concise and clear.
Had a good discussion with Malavika in the evening. In my previous TWTW I had mentioned that most MECians are aimless and she felt it was wrong. She made me realize that my definition of having an aim does not match with theirs, especially if they are not interested in a technical route for the future and so I have no right to judge them. I agree with her on this point yet clarified that there are many students who were initially interested in technical stuff but seeing no sustainable support system, they just quit and move along the path of least resistance, in case that works out for them. While it does appear as though they have an aim, it happened after resignation rather than realization of the route the best suit for. As long as someone chooses it voluntarily, I have no objection in their aspirations, even if it is not technical. My problem is with those with less will power, unable to surmount their fears and go a path that interests them, no matter how tough it may seem. They need help but more than that, they need self-belief that it is possible. I am grateful to Malavika for adding such clarity to our understanding of the system. I hope she (and you too) continue to engage in open discussions to better see whats suitable.
Friday (20/03/2020)
Woke up at 4.30 AM. The exercise app made the levels harder and I ended up spending 40 minutes doing a bunch of exercises (usually gets over in 15–20 minutes).
Laptop screen is going blurry once in a while. Made me realize I ought to be judicious with my screen time. So today’s realistic objectives:
- Work on project.
- Read the book.
Saturday (21/03/2020)
Got the laptop back from the service center. Screen pixels were failing. The vendor was telling me how business is going bad for him due to the Coronavirus scare — folks are not coming to get materials. Usually this is the peak season as year end of other businesses mean renewal opportunity for him to catch on. However, he has been struggling for the last few months. I hope things get better for him. If you need any tech repair support, please do visit him. One of the nicest men I’ve met in the recent past.
At home, decided to make a two clock timer app using flutter to measure debate time breakdown between me and my Dad. Our conversations seem skewed where one gets to speak more often thus gets an upper hand (or I am just jealous he always wins the debates. Haha). Its good to have a motivating factor to work on projects. Guess I have 6 hours to make this happen (PS: I just realized I will need 6 more days haha).
Attended a virtual Qurbana service performed by our Ex-vicar from Pune, Father Thomas Myalil, now in Mumbai. Attended a class group call on Zoom to catch up with the rest. All together 20 or so of us tuned in. Sure was fun.
After dinner, had an hour long chat with Rohith about miracles vs half known realities. We shared instances from our lives that felt magically and made us believe in the existence of a higher entity. In Rohith’s case however, he eventually learnt how it actually happened and gave up believing in ‘the hand of a superior force’. As he wonderfully puts it:
Miracles can be coincidence that may have escaped your notice!
Another productive week to look forward to! Take care at home guys.
