Madhu's Corner :: UVCE :: Lessons Learnt

An article on 85 years of my college being celebrated.
Written two years after I left college.

It's been six years since the time I joined UVCE. Two years since I left my alma mater. This time is hardly the blink of an eyelid for an institution that is celebrating the 85th year of its foundation. Many batches of students have come and gone. Yet I believe that our batch has something that we can claim to be uniquely our own. I was a part of the batch of 2000, the first batch to pass out into the new millennium. And in this new millennium, the lessons that I have learnt are what UVCE's legacy is to me. In the four years that I was a student at UVCE, I've had the pleasure of learning many things in my subject area, but those are the things that every educational institution strives to provide. What I'd like to express here are the non-traditional learning experiences I've had at UVCE.

The most vital thing that I feel that I've been blessed with from UVCE is an ability to learn. That may seem unusual, but I have an explanation. Sometimes in an educational institution you are spoon fed, treated like a baby. Sometimes in an educational institution, you are tortured to study, treated like a wayward teenager. Rarely do you see an institution that attempts to treat you like an adult. UVCE did that to me. You were asked nothing more than to learn - if you wanted to learn. You were treated with respect. You were asked to go well beyond the textbook and the practical lab. You fundamentally learnt how to learn. And that is the most valuable lesson of them all. Every day, there are greater and greater advances in every scientific field. If you are happy to sit on your current knowledge, then you are likely to be obsolete very quickly. One incident that springs to mind in this regard is when a classmate failed to obtain output for a particularly tough lab. The original exchange was in Kannada, and it looses a lot of the flavour in the translation, but I shall try. The exchange goes as follows:

Lecturer: Did you get your output?
Student: No sir.. Sir, you can check, I have the right circuit diagram, the right components and everything is correct.
Lecturer: So, if you think everything is ok, you should get output?
Lecturer: That's why you have a lab, to show that theory and real life are far apart.
Student: !?!?

The second important lesson that UVCE provided to me was to broaden my horizons beyond my limited reach. Before college, I had a very small restricted and limited view of the world. The people I've met at UVCE have been widely diverse and they have exposed me to different parts of both Karnataka and India. People of different religions, regions, languages and thinking. The lovely musical South Kanara yentha marayato the harsh Bangalore version of yeno ley? are all variants I've heard in college. And friends that you make are from different batches and different streams, juniors and seniors. During the production of the college magazine Vinyasa, I had the luck to catalog the splendid diversity the college provides. As part of the cultural festival Milagro, I had the incredible fortune to come in contact with a strange brew of mechanical, electrical and civil students. We are still in touch today and it amazes me that with so little in common and such few moments that we shared together, what good friends I have discovered.

Teachers are institutions that do more than just impart knowledge. Sometimes they can make a lasting impression. HNS with his calm and cheerfulness whenever we bothered him. VKR with his amazing energy and his ability to shame you by keeping perfect time for any appointment even without wearing a watch. ASM with his passion and love for teaching. SNF for her meticulousness and order and her kindness. GNK for his time, energy and effort and his most unconventional of question papers. APR for his ability to turn complex theory into simple thought. For the different teachers from other departments who willingly gave of themselves unselfishly. Prof Nagaraj and Prof Putturaju from the Math department. Prof Makam from Mechanical. Prof Niranjan and Prof Prabhakar from Civil. This list could go on and on. All the teachers and staff of UVCE have given generously of their time and effort into shaping the students that pass out of this institution. There are of course, other more insightful lessons that I can list here. During exams is when you realize the true meaning of the eternal sloka from the Bhagvat Gita:

This wisdom does not appear obvious, as much as it is today. A couple of semesters and a couple of papers have to pass before it becomes as crystal clear as it is now. Sometimes you write for 90%, you get 50%. This is the most frequently occurring situation. A rarer case also exists when you write for 60% and end up with something in the 70%. The other mystical component is the laboratory exam that accompanies every other theory subject. Sometimes everything goes right, and you could end up failing the subject. Sometimes nothing goes right and you get good scores. As your answer sheets go into the system, all you can pray for is that you survive intact, and praise the gods above. As any final year student will tell you, this is all a maya-jal...

What about how you feel about politics? Wait for one day when KR Circle is blocked for some rally; Every politician suddenly looks less attractive. What do you feel about traffic? Wait for one day when you are having classes in rooms close to Nirputhunga Road and the sounds of all the autos drown out the teacher; Sound pollution begins to make sense. What do you think of college food? Wait for a day when you can no longer eat canteen / darshini food; And you realize that it was the company and not the food that made it magical. What about college itself? Wait for a day when you realize that college life was probably the most unstressed and relaxed time of your life; And that you can no longer experience it again.

But then again, that's another story.