On Thu, Jun 26, 2008 at 9:25 PM, ss <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Thursday 26 Jun 2008 5:57:15 pm Badri Natarajan wrote: >> This is pretty much the story of my university education > > Usually a realization that comes with the passage of time - when college > recedes so far into the past that you get a better perspective of what > college taught you versus what you learned outside college. > > People learn a lot of things that you learned in your college without going to > your college. And they also learn a great deal that you did not learn. But > one tends to figure this out only after you've really got out of college and > washed its hangover away completely. > > Six years out of college I started seeing what college did not teach me, But > it took me 25 years out of college to learn a lot of stuff that college could > not teach me. Having said that i must point out that I spent 12 years in > college - which is difficult unless you believe you are getting something out > of it, But when you get out your mind is so full of college and the people > there that you are unaware of a world outside. And your faculty, who live on > site know nothing else and their self image revolves around the centrality of > their lives in the college/University. > > I once wrote an article about this feeling on my alumni website - a feeling > that I got after meeting a lot of smart people on CiX. > > shiv
At one point, Mohan and I were sharing an email id, on which he was subscribed to his IIT Madras batch.( I must parentheticallymention here that Mohan was underage and so decided to finish his B Sc before he went to IIT, so he opted for what was then the "by-3" or three-year course of IIT.) The year of graduation was 1969...nearly thirty-five years before we were subscribed. I found, increasingly, that the emails were of an inanely risque character, and I wrote to the egroup, mentioning that there might be other women (including alumnae) reading the emails, so it might be toned down. I was asked whose spouse I was, and I mentioned Mohan's name; they couldn't place him. So I explained to the moderator about the 3 year course, and got an email to this effect: "Even if he had been in the room next to mine I would not care to know him, he was a "by-3" and we don't care for people like that." I wrote back, expressing amazement at such a negative attitude after a gap of 35 years; and mentioned that as far as Mohan's IIM class was concerned, it was I who was moderating their egroup. The tone of the answer was instantly friendly when the initials IIMA were read...and soon I was asked if I would co-moderate the IIT group! Alas, alas,alas, it has to be said...I have found some of this attitude on silk too. I find that if someone lacks social skills or a command of English, they sometimes feel less than comfortable joining this list, and say it is an elitist group....and Udhay's reply to that is, he doesn't dispute it. I do try and dispute it with vigour, but there ARE times when..... So I, personally, was glad to see this email and its subsequent thread, but am waiting to see which are the elite institutions each of the respondents says s/he is from....will be waiting to see who else is, like me, from Swarna (south-Indian-in-south-Calcutta middle-class school) and Gokhale Memorial (solid middle-class Bengali girls' college) and Calcutta University, not a mention of any Poison Ivy League.... If I think I am superior to anyone because I am more good-looking, better educated, more wealthy, better connected, better dressed, or any other reason....I am missing a lot in the people I meet, and I am the loser. Sorry for the rant...but it's something I feel so strongly about! Deepa.
