Ignorance, Blame, Responsibility
I have heard stories of lot of people on youtube, how when they were in school / university they got into bad stuff. Lots of difffrent types of regrets.Some regret that picked up smoking/drugs in the uni , some regret they got in company of wrong people , some regret wasting their time and not giving their 100%. But in my case its quite different , I dont have any of these regrets. I tried to navigate around all of these situations because i knew what I wanted from the very start, but still life had planned something else for me.
When i enrolled in my current uni approc 4 years ago . I had my expectation set to low , I had already my aim in mind , and since i am from India , where living is competition , I tried for IITs and Nits , those are like top institutes but i couldnt get in . The thing is i was not even sad about that , during the 2 years of preparation I had came to the realization that i am just not enjoying it and all my effort wasnt turning into anything so i had kind off given up a long time ago. Buit stil i managed to secured a decent college in my state , which was like 3rd best in my state. Even before the college has started I started learning Cpp because i had expected i aint learning anything from the college. I was very well aware of the fact that I would need to do this all my myself. And I did , In my first yeat when everyone was wasting time I beacme at good at DSA and did leetcode. Learned various coding concepts well before the syllabus .Mafe loads of projects. participated in hackathons, tried competitive programming. At the end I dont have any regrets about the time I spent and to be honest i loved doing it . It was differnt than the feeling i had during my coaching institure period , I did not hated what I was doing , I was actually enjoying it and well seeing the results as well. I secure internship in the statup during towards the end of my second year ,which has turned into full time job and I am still working in the company. The startup is great , I get to work on lots of stuff , I get to take the ownership of the products I build. All these things looks great . If there wanst this this ONE thing while all this was going on , It would hbave been a great journey.
That one thing That one thing is my college itself, even though I had set my expectations low , It managed to even go below my expection. I knew i wans’t going to get top class education , neither good internship / job oportinuties . And I prepared for that . I managed all those things by myself . But to do that I just needed one thing , that is TIME. Yes the most valulable rescource for any human (atleast what i believe). But my college stripped that away from me . I needed to travel almost 4 hours back and forth to my college . I did not even complain for that , I made use of that time, tried to solve DSA problems in my head, sometimes learning japanese , sometimes watching tech content, etc . But going though all that struggle of going in the crowded local train of mumbai, thought that excrutiating heat, burning so much of my energy , only to waste my time in college. Sometimes even returning back since no lectures are taking place because of some annual day or something . I was forced by the system , by the professors to waste my time , to not do the things that would help me in my career , not do things i like doing , not focus of my health . Our entire first yeat was filled with subjects which a software engineer would almost never require. Physics ,chemistry , some non related maths , some 3d modelling crap we need to draw on paper, mechanical engineering workshops and loads of those things while being a Computer Science curriculum . In second year not only they did not provide any help in securing a internhip , but didnt even allow to take leave and work on those or atleast understand absence of few days. We were required to main a strict 75% attendance , THIS one thing they have used so much against us . I told them my problems but they never listened. They turn their blind eye. I need to go through so much hell to maintain this attendance and still do all the things that i wanted to do and mattered in my career. And wasting my time wasnt the only issue , another issue was being treated as prisoners , so not rights , no respect , no dignity . Getting treated as prisoners while paying the ones who are treating you like this was a thing that is still a difficult thing for me to comprehend. Every other day we would get threat from the authorities , You need to fill this feedback form , otherwise you wont get marks for your assignments, You need to write 50 pages of assignments copying from chatgpt or other student (all the students are copying in front of them) otherwise you wont get attendance, Fill this alumni for or you wont be allowed frfor your final year project presentation, every body needs to compulsorily write research paper (even though it isnt adding any value and just to increase the professors reputation score on these research paper website ) and lot of this crap .Its like every notice on the official group came with a threat. I believed it would get better was came towards end of out 4 yeart period of gradution , bt it kept and kept getting worse and worse . There are a lot of things that i am forgetting now since i have goine through this so much that i went from anger to acceptance that this is my fate now. I have lost many things because of this, the time that i would utilize for me , the time that i could have given to the relationships in my life, I have countless hours of sleep, i have even lost my hairs i have went bald at very young age (stress and genetics both) .What other option i had to give up on my dreams , to give up on the 4 years , which is a lot . For me time is very precious and they managed to steal the most precious thing away from me.
Clueless and Ignorance
When i think about it , all the parties involved in this dont even think this is problem , that this is exploitation , or take a moment to actually think about it . “Is this our goal?” , “Do I feel good about it?”. Not even asking this question makes one clueless. I don’t know if there should be any punishment for being clueless , but one thing is sure that It has consequences and some people are clueless to an extent where even after consequences they are still clueless . And even if one is capable of asking questions and still decided to not act them , it makes them ignorant. And the systems that has been setup by humans gives an easy option for them to be clueless and ignorant . You dont have to think much , there are already paths designed for you this system , You are pushed into it and as time passes you also embrace it slowly . You stop questioning “why?” . You are born -> next thing you need to do is education -> then get a degree -> find Job -?find life partner -> marry -> kids -> retire -> and wait for death. ofcourse there is more to it and taking this path isn’t wrong. One can take any path they want . But if somebody tries to take a different path, this system would make it very diffilcult for them.
Blame and Resonsibily
Although you can be clueless and ignorant ,every action and lack of action as well has consequenes and those are real, And you have to responsibility of those . But when the action taken is behind a chain of comand of a system , the responsibility is suddenly gone , the blame is dispersed. Now suddenly exploitation of student is not the fault of the professor , because the professor was just following the guidelines and rules of HOD , the HOD is doing what the upper management told them , the upper management would blame someonbe else and this goes on . This system makes it easy to disperse the responsibilty and blame among group of people and thus no responsibility is taken and no changes are implemented. The world continues to move one. The involved parties forget about it, the public forgets about it and the worst of all the victims also starts forgetting it. Time does it, washes away every emotions. Some day it wont be summer , it would be rainy season, and the all those emotions would be gone , like tears in rain.
Anyways, here are some music recommendation , this took bunch of days to write and have came across several amazing pieces . I love music probably the thing I love the most. And instead of sharing blame and responsibility I would want to share this->