“I need a break”, an unsent letter to my FacAd

Hi Professor.

You’re one of my faculty advisors, and the subject of this email sums up my situation. I’m not a particularly diligent student, and I don’t want to be seen as one, either — any unwarranted expectations you might have are meaningless to me. I’m not in the correct mental space to express unequivocally what I’m feeling right now, how deeply the current state of affairs troubles me, and how close I am to a complete breakdown. Still, I feel like writing this email is the only thing that seems close to a solution right now.

The academics at Kharagpur haven’t been particularly exciting (or relevant or important or interesting or innovative). The courses are… fine. The lectures are fine, the teaching is fine, the examinations are….fine. They’re all as dull, bland, and as run-of-the-mill as corrugated cardboard. The CS courses still haven’t been updated to include AI or HCI or any other specialization, which would be alarming in some places like the US, especially in 2020. Here at Kharagpur, that’s acceptable. The courses don’t require creativity, thinking, or critical analysis. The examinations are primarily repetitions and vomiting (not only by the students). Most could ace them if they were allowed to carry a sheet of formulae, but it works because testing the ability to remember strings of characters and notation seems like the main focus here at Kharagpur.

But this is not news to me, and it’s sad how little the quality of education at Kharagpur bothers me anymore. I was already burnt out after the first month of the online semester. Two semesters of such “unprecedented” times have taught me how to numb myself more than anything. I’m burnt out because I have to remember which of the 3 different moodles has the course I want every time I look at the syllabus. I’m burnt out because I have to make sure to remember whether the class is being conducted on Teams, Meet or Youtube. Oh wait, there’s Zoom as well. I’m burnt out because I’ve to prepare long reports and discussions of virtual labs that are practically useless. As a fresher, I wanted to pursue research, you know, I really did. But I am not even as confident about holding equipment the right way with ‘virtual’ labs, let alone perform experiments. I am surprised an institution like ours seems okay with us graduating while completing labs virtually. I mean, could we even call ourselves “engineers”?

I’m burnt out because even after six months of break, the relevant departments could not come up with a lab manual for online labs, let alone a model report, or a streamlined interface, so now I’ve got to

1) Read the (scanned) offline manuals

2) Try to understand what experiments can and can’t be performed on this new interface (which I don’t even know how to operate because there was zero training provided)

3) Verify with the TA (who doesn’t reply to emails before 24 hours), and then wait till he makes up some arbitrary guidelines with zero certainties of it not being modified at the last minute.

(Not to mention actually doing the experiment, which I would probably never even need to in my entire professional life.)

I’m burnt out because the TA who’s supposed to be there for me during tutorials refuses to answer my questions about what the tutorial questions mean because she thinks I’m asking for the answer.

I’m burnt out because I cannot defer mugging up these courses until the examinations because I will be tested on my ability to vomit every week.

I’m burnt out because I have to worry about finding good video lectures, notes, assignments, books online, and completing them, in addition to vomiting every week, because guess what, vomiting won’t help me get a job.

I have to worry about competing with students who are sitting in the lecture halls of world-class institutions; the students who are creating, building, innovating, and working on cutting-edge research, who’re not wasting time worrying about vomiting or about the bazillions of other things that their administration hasn’t been putting them through.

I’m burnt out because I have to worry about getting enough projects on my resume, or I won’t get an internship, but I literally have no time left over from the infinitely unending loop that Kharagpur is putting me through. I have to worry about not worrying too much, or my mental health would stall to lows where suicide (obviously) feels like an escape from this nightmare.

I’m not a productivity machine, and I cannot hustle like it’s JEE anymore. Well, I can, but I refuse to. I refuse to do anything that is killing me alive, that’s killing my creativity (if it ever existed), that’s impairing my ability to do actual meaningful work, truly meaningful learning, thinking, creating.

I refuse to do anything that turns me into yet another perfect factory-manufactured IITian output because the IITian tag is simply not worth it anymore.

I cannot sacrifice my health because some professors don’t want to work on improving conditions for us, and I can’t fight anymore to get a minimum level of acceptable education.

I also cannot quit, because I don’t trust my judgment, because I know all this online time has reduced my cognitive abilities to terrible levels. I have to spend 80% of my day at a screen, at the same screen that contains thousands of distractions, which kills my attention span and reduces my cognitive abilities to that of a nut. I can’t think about anything — studying, future planning, health, or even life-altering decisions, for which I need to be at 100% when I’m forced to spend so much time online.

I feel that it is imperative for me to take a break, clear my mind, and think about my problems one at a time. That would only be possible with your support. I need prior permission to take a break because I know anything I produce ex-post-facto would be dismissed. The worst-case scenario would be me taking leave without permission, and having that anxiety lingering on my head would defeat the purpose of the break itself, which would only cause me more pain and trouble.

It would be held against me if I’d say, “I don’t feel like learning this way anymore”, so I’d instead put it this way, “The majority of us have lost the ability to learn.”

Regards,

Cream of the Country(?)