Can any reader explain this sequence?
Friday, May 17, 2013
Wednesday, May 15, 2013
Book review- Inferno
There are a few things that characterize a Dan Brown novel:
* Shady government and private organisations
* A cutting-edge technology in the hands of rogue elements
* The protagonist on the run, forced to solve puzzles to reach the next level of puzzle solving, ad infinitum, finally to reach the showdown.
* A strong female character, accompanying/helping the protagonist in his quest.
* Amazing locales so descriptive that you can paint them in your mind's eye to see them in all glory.
* Characters whose allegiances/motivations are nebulous
Inferno has everything and more. It has a typical Brown stamp to it. Non-stop action from the word go. Detractors complain about his laboriously verbose style of descriptive writing where the focus is not so much in telling a story as it is about painting a picture before the reader's eyes with words as the palette; a stunning locale as the canvas. Irrespective of criticisms, I am a admirer of his engaging, entertaining style. If you expect a true-to-traditions literary work, then Brown is not the guy for you. But if you want to have a good time, told a story with all twists, turns, drama and suspense then you have the right person. Inferno is such a page-turner.
This time Florence is Brown's muse and Dante Alighieri, the Italian bard, his inspiration. After completing the novel, I felt the Dante connection to be loose and contrived. But that doesn't take away from the novel's allure of story-telling. Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon finds himself with a gunshot wound in his skull, waking up groggily in a Florence hospital. He is diagnosed with anterograde amnesia, unable to recount the happenings of the last two days. An assassin is out to kill him and reaches the hospital. His doctor, a mysterious blond named Sienna Brooks aids his escape and the two vault off on a breathtaking run through Florence, away from the assassin and another set of pursuers, a shady private militia called SRS. Langdon is haunted by visions, eerie images of death and a woman goading him on "To seek and find". The vision is his only clue and he sets off an a quest to piece together the last two days of his life with Sienna in tow.
Brown's genius and penchant for trivia is evident; we get a guided tour of the city of Florence captured in all its artistic and architectural splendor, through Langdon's sharp eye. The Renaissance masters, we get to see them all- Brunelleschi, Vasari, Michelangelo. We get to see Florence's architectural masterpieces- Ponte Vecchi, the Boboli Garden and more. The visual treat through the medium of words is sometimes overwhelming. Yet, the pair of Langdon and Sienna tear through the city at lightning speed through hidden passages, doorways, solving puzzles and thinking on their feet to evade an army of military and police on their heels. The poet Dante is the leitmotif in Inferno. His monumental work, the Divine Comedy, the compass that Langdon resorts to, to retrace his way. The Divine Comedy is one of Europe's most celebrated epic poems. Dante describes his journey through Hell, Purgatory and finally Paradise. In a sense, the poem is a metaphor for "Inferno". Unlike the Lost Symbol where the events took place over a night, here the events unfurl over one full day and night. Who is the assassin? Why is the military chasing Langdon? Who is the woman in the vision, What does "seek and find" mean? What happened on the days that Langdon missed? Brown answers all these in his inimitable style. The female characters in this work are in vintage Brown style, strong, independent, well-fleshed out. As in all his novels, we are introduced to new technology/concepts. We learn of the Faraday projector, blood squibs, SPD glasses, Transhumanism, genetic engineering, and many more.
It will be a spoiler to reveal any further. But suffice to say there are a lot of unexpected twists and turns, nail-biting moments. It is un-putdownable.
Monday, May 13, 2013
Looking back 2.0
My previous post - Looking Back- has generated a healthy response from people. This is what I was looking forward to. My friend Vikku posted an entire article's worth as comments. I put it up here so that people can read his opinions vis-a-vis the blogpost.
Note: I have removed actual names he had put up to maintain anonymity.
Vikku's comments:
2) Again, this is something you need to tell companies. They are the ones who grade us by our CGs and our academic profile when in reality, a person needs only common sense, quick thinking skills and adaptability to learn new things to work effectively. Blame companies who are stingy to spend on their HR dept. and hire as little as they require and then make these team of 4-5 people come and recruit people from a sample space of 1000+. Naturally they will not have time or patience to sit and interview everyone individually. I would really like to see companies set their own entrance test (like Thoughtworks) regardless of CG or with a very low CG cutoff since that is a much more feasible way of determining the right person for a job.
Also, ideally the college could let people choose between whether they want to work or study further and separate the two classes and teach accordingly. Aspirants for jobs must be taught industrial standard stuff which the companies expect, and higher studies people can ideally specialize even further and be allowed to do research projects which will help them strengthen their academic profiles. But this also puts the burden of choosing between the two to the students, which in turn is never really his choice as long as his parents are Indians.
3) This is near impossible because the load for teachers will rise exponentially. They are also humans, after all. Ideally they should not have this concept of circulating teachers like what they have now. I had one teacher teach me 6 different subjects. She is qualified to take 2 of them at max. Other 4 she had to study herself before teaching. If she was left to teach the 2 she knows fully well, everything would have been good. Needlessly they will keep rotating people. That should stop.
But senior teachers who have specialization in more than one should be allowed to teach their subjects of choice. They can be freely rotated since they are actually good at whatever they are put at.
4) This has actually worked in one case of mine. There was someone who taught CPP for me and also for a BIO section in second sem. Bio class went and complained saying the person knows nothing and teaching nothing. Hence the teacher got severely reprimanded. So came and tried buttering up to us by giving us all high marks in our 3rd midsem. Actually put marks whose total came up to 51 for me. All of us gave 1/5 score to the teacher ; was reprimanded yet again and either got fired or quit after my 3rd semester.
There are also cases like teachers who are too paavam and nice but ends up teaching nothing but gets 5/5 because he is so nice to students. Students should be impartial and grade teachers correctly. Otherwise the system will be screwed. There was also one other teacher in my 6th sem. Equally bad teacher, all gave 1/5. I don't know if she was sacked or she chose to do it, but her tag turned from green to blue. I have seen her as an M Tech student in Chit in my final year and this year as well! :D I'd like to think she was sacked due to the low scores. :P
5) Very good suggestion, I wholeheartedly support it!
6) I THINK, not sure, Civil students actually have some tie up like this. Also, SPF for Mech students. There are a lot of instances, but all left to the department and how interested and how strong in putting forth their arguments towards the cause their deans are.
7) This is the best suggestion on the list, IMO. We had a subject called Electrical Gadgets in school which was exactly this. I think it should extend to all technologies. Like how many people actually can troubleshoot hardware problems for a PC? I learnt it by nondifying my computer ever since I was a small kid. Teaching things like this is essential, I feel.
8) I agree on having subject relevant labs. But this also should be common to a certain degree. I for one feel a basic electrical lab should be common to all engineers, regardless of their department.
9) Agreed. I have had friends of mine asking me for my ID card so they can borrow more under my name.
10) This is something the students should be addressed to first. In a class of 50 odd, there will be at most FIVE people who will be willing to interact with the teacher. I have suffered through classes wherein the teachers are HYPER ENTHU about classroom interaction. I was one of the two or three people in my class who would respond to my basic EEE sir in first sem, that too only because he would not let the class proceed further without getting a reply. He ended up taking all our free hours in first sem (we had 6; EEE was 3 credit) a 300% increase in the number of classes, to finish our portions, but still could not.
I know that you will be willing to interact with the teacher. I also will be willing, provided the entire class does it. Doing it as a lone man just makes it look like you are the arrogant and annoying teacher's pet of the class - not something I want associated to my name, but not something that I care about to stop me from interacting as well. I do not know about others but I can clearly tell you that some people do not want to open their mouths, mostly because majority of them have stage fright, and the others are simply indifferent towards it. They do not see a point in interaction at all. They are the types that are for this current system. Change them first.
11) This was actually once thought of. In your first year, when they made midsems weekend no. They were actually contemplating on this system of morning session, lunch, afternoon session. The three hour blocks would have stayed the same. 8 40 - 11 10; 2 20 - 4 50. I always presumed that the failure of the weekend midsem model (by far the most abysmal thing our college has come up with) made them realize that they are better off maintaining status quo.
12) Agree with you but have some minor modifications myself. Lab timings should be reduced severely (at least computer labs, I do not know about labs that require actual physical work such as the ones outside of Chit). Observation and record should be merged into one - and that should be filled in then and there once you complete your task. That is the whole point, to record your observations of the task. Not to go back home/hostel and generate values for everything one day before submission. Ideally, this will help prepare for practical examinations. And the lab structure should be modified: one task per lab session, if you complete your work you should be free to go. In my first sem C lab, we were three batches and all three had different teachers. First batch sir would let them off after they finish their program for the day. I asked my batch teacher if she would let us also go the same way. She said do your program we'll see. I did it, and she responds (although jokingly) that punishment for completing 3 hour work in 3 minutes that I can't leave the lab. :|
13) Student community should first change their attitude and mindset about education first. Then they can introspect. :P
My rejoinder:
* I was of the opinion that Private Universities should form a council and bring in some uniformity,something like the IIT council. I know, it seems to undermine the very purpose of autonomy, but what I mean is a group which can enforce some uniformity, atleast superficially. If this were done, then industry will get a broad sense of uniformity. But, I wonder if this will be feasible.
*Yes, agreed that CG is probably the only standardised measure statistically available to evaluate 1000s of students. Placements processes are ad-hoc and it is difficult to expect any uniformity; it varies with company and the interview panel.But then, that is their problem. If they end up recruiting sub-standard people, then they will eventually realise that something is wrong with their system and change it. More than employment, we should focus on employability of the students. I have heard from many people that this is a bigger challenge. Are our Universities producing graduates with sound fundamentals and are they equipped to learn at the job? I don't think separating job-seekers and higher study people is feasible, it will be cumbersome and practically a nightmare to implement, and what of those who decide what to do at the last moment.
*University should show some sense in fixing up a good teacher-student ratio and only then admit students, taking care not to exceed the limit. Quality should not be sacrificed at the altar of quality (viz.- eductaing the masses). UGC should fix a upper limit on this ratio and ensure it is strictly complied. If they want more students, then they must recruit more teachers. If the flow is one-way, there will only be stagnation.
*The feedback system is not sound. It is loaded against the weaklings- the new, inexperienced teachers. What about senior teachers who have become complacent and have stopped fine-tuning themselves? Will the management act against them in the event of poor feedback?
The senior staff must realise the scenario is different today and must adapt accordingly, thats why I insist on counselling teachers to acquaint them with changing student mindset and expectations.
*You are right when you say the students must be alert in giving proper grades, not based on how nice a person is, instead on how well he imparts knowledge.
*Also,I feel it is of prime importance to have a bridge between teachers and students in the form of a dedicated Student Counselling centre, where resource persons can help receive student opinion in secrecy and analyse it and present it to teachers. Let us face it, no one can directly go to a teacher and say complaints or criticise him/her. A counsellor can do the job. Only well-trained people with due diligence should be appointed.
*It must be the teacher's job to sustain interest in the class. Agreed not all can be expected to be partcipative, but he should create an atmosphere like that. I know many teachers in our college who can do that very well.
*Yes,Lab subjects must be in touch with the occuring theory class. Sometimes the experiment in the lab would be on a topic not yet covered in the class.Happened to me in Digital electronics lab. In that case, the lab incharge must see to it that the theory is explained. Yet, they made us do the experiments blindly. It was a big waste of time. The teacher was least interested.Yes, agree, once lab work is done we should be off. In fact I know many teachers who will let us free, but it is the Department heads who shoot down such a move, saying people will go out of college,roaming outside, etc.
Looking back
This is a post I've been wanting to put up for some time now. After my last post much has happened in life, among which is completing college. So I wanted to, in hindsight, see how I fared the past four years, objectively; to look the system in its face after being a part of it and to sum up my experiences, opinions and suggestions for improving it. My intention is not to trash/pan the setup. I merely seek, for my own satisfaction, to offer a thorough evaluation.
In India, my generation is the bearers of the first harvest of technology revolution. I am a child of the 90s. And as many would say, 90s was when the floodgates of India were opened to the world, by a wise PM- Narasimha Rao, who for obvious reason of not having "Gandhi" for a surname is today ignored by his partymen. It is not as if, Rao brought in reforms suo-moto , but it was the compulsion of an impending economic crunch. But credit goes to him for bearing the political burden of ushering it in. Not to diverge, this growing-up-with-technology made me choose a course in Engineering, at a well-respected private University, down South.
I have had this experience even in schools- the system is always result-driven as far as my State- Tamil Nadu- is concerned. Quality of an educational institution is weighed in terms of its success rate- quantity- in a exam (10th, +2). Imparting education is seen as reproducing, blindly or otherwise, textual information. This is to be expected since the need to educate a large number of students ( caused by large population), results in a highly skewed teacher-student ratio. Add it to the fact that, no effort has been made to make the teaching profession attractive, monetarily, resulting in a acute dearth of well-qualified persons as teachers. It was not like this always- I have heard/read about times when the teacher's profession was revered. The social prestige it had was high. Not so now. Today, it is seen as just another profession- a source of job security and income. I don't mean to generalise this as the mentality of all teachers, but in my knowledge it is largely the case. Academic rigour is lacking among teachers, from my personal experience of schooling. Mastery of the text is equated to scholarship of the subject. I've been in schools in places as varied as- The Nilgiris, Tirunelveli, Delhi, Trichy. S.L.Bhyrappa opines, in his brilliantly written autobiography Bhitti, that the decline in quality is due to the doing away of merit as a criterion for selecting teachers because of implementation of reservation policy. This has led to a dilution in quality. It is counter-logical that in a profession such as teaching, which has the capability to shape a million minds, merit should be done away with. Instead, the thrust must have been on institutional mechanisms like scholarship, financial incentives, mass awareness, etc. to help people from marginalised sections to come up. A typical class was never witness to a probing, intellectually stimulating discussion on the subject at hand. It is a largely one-way street of information flow- teacher to student. Concepts were never laid threadbare and reassembled to reveal the larger picture. Mathematics might as well be renamed as "Some text problems and their Standard solutions". Even if there was a great teacher, the system allowed her/him no room to try something different. Conforming to the system was imperative for survival. Inquisitive questions were shot down as arrogance or merely brushed aside. Laws of demand and supply ensure that as long as a school showed 100% results, people flocked for admission. There is no incentive to improve the state of affairs. Personal experience- participation in extra-curricular activities depended on academic excellence (read as high marks). My friend and myself wanted to participate in a quiz competition (both of us were good). While I was allowed, my friend was denied citing is less than desirable marks. This could have happened in any school. There are other institutions (boarding schools), I learnt from my friends, which are no different from the description of concentration camps, where one in made to study close to 18 hours. This crazy demand for marks, has resulted in a phenomenon called "Mark/Grade inflation" is public exams. Each passing year, the number of centums in subjects is increasing exponentially, so that the system's demand for astronomical marks is satisfied.
To come back to the plot, my college experience was not a big difference from this. In my first year, I had a vast array of subjects. The day was crammed to the fullest. Curricular compulsions forced this state of affairs. I'll list out the subjects I had:
1. Engineering drawing
2. Basic Civil engineering
3. Communication strategies
4. Basic Mechanical engineering
5.Personality development (!)
6. Chemistry
7. Mathematics-I
8. Programming in C
9. Chemistry lab
10. Computer lab
11. CAD lab.
Of all these, even after four years, I still don't understand why (2), (4), (6), (9) were there. Let me tell you this, I am a student of Electrical and electronics engineering. I had a rude shock when I saw the timetable- Have I come to the right class? Where's anything related to Electrical? The teachers's only mandate is to cover the syllabus. Once, in a lecture in IIT-Delhi, the professor said, "In this institution we never focus on covering the syllabus, we focus on uncovering it". What a far-cry from my college. In my first year, because of this vast galaxy of subjects I never had time for anything else. The teacher also never inspired any measure of confidence. In his/her defence, there was no incentive to try something different. You just covered the syllabus, who cares if everyone understood or not. Also I have seen, some of the teachers themself have a remarkably poor grasp of the subject matter. What can you say, when they themselves are products of the same system. This is a vicious circle. But some teachers were indeed gems. They gave their best to elucidate concepts to the fullest, cleared doubts; were honest enough to say they did not know it now, but promised to refer and explain further. And they kept that promise.
There was this ugly phenomenon of students going to the teachers and begging for marks- asking for 1 mark, 2 mark, etc. Disgusting. The system forced them to do that. Some even had the temerity to tamper with the teacher's register,manipulating figures there. It was an eye-opener, on the kind of culture the education system encouraged. Well, to be honest, my college is what people would call as - " good place". It is true. Infrastructure is present, there is no teacher shortage. I've seen some colleges that are really pathetic- buildings half-constructed, hostels that are hell holes, no good teachers, no proper labs, etc. Compared to them, my college is top class. It is a Tier-2 college. But yet, the quality of education offered, is ordinary or average. As a student, I never felt really inspired, confident that I am learning something great.
But, my college does not lack in initiatives. They are doing their best within the narrow confines of the system. Seminars are organised, people from the industry are brought in, etc. But even these positive initiatives have a seemingly monotonous/moribund feel to it. It is all so mechanical. How to change this state of affairs? What is lacking? What needs to be done? These questions have bothered me. For long, I used to think that something is wrong with me. If I'm not doing good, then I'm not working hard enough or I'm not good enough. These are dangerous thoughts. They can drive a person crazy. It is only later I realised that it was the same with all. The trick is to know how to milk the system to your advantage. There were people I know who did just that. One kind of people were there, they hardly attend classes, cared two hoots for what the teacher had to say and wrote what they knew in the exam. The other extreme was the ever-concerned, ever-anxious group that hung on every word of the teacher. They did not care if the teacher merely repeated what was in the book- teaching by converting active voice to passive voice- they wrote down that also. For them going to each and every teacher and collecting notes was the principal job. They crammed everything in it. There is another kind of people- normally they are like the first category of people, caring nothing. But from a week before the exam they morph into the second category. They study just for exams. Then over, back to square one. I don't stand in judgement of any group merely recording what I've seen. And, I also have to admit this- there are some genuinely talented people in the student pool. They are regular, they know what they are doing. Even if the teacher is lacking, they compensate by thorough self-study. I know such people.
After four years, I have the following suggestions to offer the management:
* Abandon all unrelated stuff, this is not school. We've come to college to specialise.
* Lead away from the exam/placements focused approach to education. Results are important, but they are not the only thing. The syllabus must be tailored to suit the student's need and not the other way around.
* Only teachers who are domain specialists in a particular subject must handle classes on that. Not any teacher. I've seen teachers handle subjects that they did not specialise in. It is extremely difficult for them to impart the concepts fully. The whole purpose is lost since the teacher just looks to go by the prescribed text.
* Comprehensive and critical evaluation of a teacher's performance by means of a feedback system. Although it exists, its implementation leaves much to be desired. Lets face it, gone are the days when students were mere passive recipients. Constructive criticism and feedback from the student community is to be encouraged. And a suitable atmosphere must exist for it to happen.
* Considering my college has a thriving Law department, I would like to request them to offer Basic India Law, as a course for first year students. In today's world, this will be infinitely helpful when we are forced to fight injustices in the system. Laws like the IPC, Motor Vehicles Act, RTI, CrPC, should be introduced. Practical instances should be taken and the role played by the law illustrated. People interested in it can take such electives at a later stage also. This is a sure step towards citizen-empowerment, in my view. The University's role is not limited to just getting students placed, but to send out responsible citizens.
* Collaboration with local govt. administration to sensitise the role played by their subjects in solving problems. For instance, when the Corporation is planning to build a bridge/ a new bus-shelter or maintenance work on a sub-station is being done, etc. students should be allowed to visit/participate in such activities. Civil engineering students can be taken in as apprentices when a construction work goes on (like roads, etc.) so that they have a real-time learning experiences.
* Any engineering work, even as small as wiring, repairing a fan, etc. should involve student participation. They can learn valuable hands-on, practical knowledge from it.
* In hindsight, I realise now the role of software tools like MATLAB, PSPICE, etc. for me as an electrical person. College should offer labs for such software in first year. Having chemistry lab is completely useless- we did stupid experiments like titration of this salt, that salt- which after 4 years I see would not serve me as an engineer at all. Most companies have dedicated Chemists to do such things. Instead, offer subject-relevant lab courses.
* Incentivise library usage. the present system of just 2 books a person is not good. A person should be allowed to take 4-5 books equal to the number of subjects he/she has.
* Teacher workshops for counselling teachers to shift towards a new method of teaching, where the class is not a one-way street. There is big time bias for some teachers to judge students as good/bad based on exam marks.
* To reduce the number of teaching hours in a day. To sit for 9 AM -5 PM,for 8 classes, in a hot country like ours, and to listen to class is mentally straining. At the end of the day, no energy is left to study. Teaching hours to be reduced to 6. Two sessions with a break in between. 9-12 noon; break till 2PM; 2-5PM. Each class can be for 1 hour. This gives enough time to elucidate concepts; having practical demonstrations in class to be encouraged by the management.
* Do away with writing Record for the lab. The most time-consuming and unproductive of activities is this writing of Record. It serves no purpose. Instead, the thrust must be to clearly explain, to each student, the purport and procedure of the experiment; the contextual relevance. Mindlessly writing steps from "last-year record" etc. will dull the mind.
*Last, but most importantly, the student community should also have a deep introspection. Yes, it is true the system is not very friendly. But one should try to maximise the resources available.
My college has all the right things, it only needs well-directed action and a will on the management and the teachers' part to offer a paradigm shift in terms of education at the University level, with the co-operation of the students.
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