I decided to join engineering just to learn computer science and do cool things with it. But as I looked at the first year syllabus i got from college on the first day I was very much disappointed. It was a total mess, Mechanical, Civil, Engineering graphics aaaarrhhhh, 2 mathematics papers, chemistry (my enemy) , electrical engineering, physics and a stupid lab (grinding, cutting, filing… all sorts of exercise). At the end I found out a computer fundamentals paper and C lab. In total 9 papers of bullshit and one computer science paper.
I was quite upset with the syllabus and when I complained about this to my friends, they were like “Engineers need to know about everything”, and all sorts of conservative answers. Someone even told me that we learn chemistry so that we can understand how the computer cabinet corrodes. Excuses !!!! Anyways one year was wasted.
The first year was terror, seniors and ragging experts. Even though there was a law banning ragging everyone seemed to enjoy it. Even some of my hostel mates supported it. They also had all sorts of excuses, like we need to get out of out shyness, we are preparing for the world etc…. Bastards.
Complaints to the college authorities were neglected, if any junior made a complaint to the police then the principal and some staff would negotiate for the senior and make the junior withdraw the complaint. The situation was soo bad that we used to run and jump two walls to safety, if someone whispered…. “seniors coming”.
I was quite lucky and escaped most seniors with out much of a trouble, had to run and hide a few times, still it was ok. Worst years were yet to come….
I also had a similar experience with my first year in college. Though Ragging was not a problem for me, The syllabus was. I could not believe that I was studying English and Hindi Literature in my first and second year. Well I had no other option as all the other universities were still teaching Cobol and Pascal…and the best bet I could get was C++.
This was in 2002 when C# was already out and people were already implementing all their programs in Java/Perl/PHP/Python etc.
Long live our Professional Education System…
Comment by John — January 3, 2008 @ 8:44 pm
Wasted 3 years of my life just to get that degree certificate so that I could get out of the country…
Comment by John — January 3, 2008 @ 8:45 pm
My personal opinion is that it is high time that ragging should be scrapped away for a better society.Education should ideally teach a kid to behave in a civilized way.That is not happening in our colleges.Colleges have became the place to create miscreants.A police officer was killed last year trying to make peace in one of our college last year.
It is true that education cannot make a man civilized and moral.WE usually find educated people in different walks of life existing without ethics.Also the present students are learning for a certificate or job to make money and not for acquiring knowledge or learning skills.
Now a days students do not have much respect for their teachers.The teachers do not show any commitment to the students also.This is the erosion of our indian culture where students respected teachers and teachers groomed children…..
To stop ragging management should take stern action with the cooperation of students.
The standard of technical education is not up to the mark even though we exports lots of professionals to different parts of the world.It should be noted that the standard of institutes like IIT & IISc are good and are comparable with international schools.Our universities lack research and unless our universities give proper importance in R&D activities inside the campasses so that students can also take part , the quality of education is not going to improve.I would love to see some r&d going on in the college i studied but there is no chance for it for the next 5 more years i guess……
Comment by Maneesh J — January 8, 2008 @ 4:17 pm
Engineering sucks. Even I got trapped. Still continuing. 2 years up. 2 more to go. That is if I plan to get a Kerala University Degree.
Comment by Prasanth — January 10, 2008 @ 12:29 am
[...] My Four Years of Engineering – Year 1 [...]
Pingback by Happy BirthDay to Me and My Blog | Disruptive Technologies and Education — June 12, 2008 @ 10:08 am
You had at least one CS paper in first year. We at MG University had none. Just one module of the Basic Electronics Engg, Intro to Computer H/W. I’m currently doing 6th sem, stuck with mini project. Read some of your articles about IEEE project. Those are something most of CS engg students in the state would agree. Keep going.
Comment by Nikhil George — April 28, 2009 @ 4:20 am