Post college musings

College is finally over, and I have an entire new set of confusing thoughts to deal with, most of them to do with future prospects and so on. Would a masters in a non-English speaking country be a good experience even if the institute is good? Or should I just do a job for a few years and then make a decision? That seems to be the sensible option. And I still want to return to India after whatever degree I get abroad. So maybe it would be better if I never leave, unfortunately then the IIMs seem to be the only option.

The ideal thing would of course have been that my grades and projects would have been bad enough or good enough to give me enough conviction to make a strong decision. But they're hovering around the mediocre range...which is not very encouraging, and you always feel tempted to think you'll get your act together later on.

The sensation of leaving college and going out on your own, taking your own decisions, managing your own money, hasn't quite sunk in yet, but I think I'm starting to get premonitions of what it would be like. I had something of an argument with my family over what I should do-with them arguing for a stable, well-paid job 5 years down the line, and me giving vague arguments about what I want to do right now, with no idea about after 2 years, or even next year for that matter. In the process, I thought a lot about money matters, responsibilities, future plans and so on. Anyway, that matter has kind of subsided for the present. So I suppose I'll be writing a similar blog later.

Speaking of future careers, a senior from our college wrote a horrible, horrible book, called "the equation of my love" or something similar...it got plenty of us thinking, how hard could it be to become a full time writer, plenty of idiots do it, i suppose writing styles could be developed, and you might even turn out something decent given the right amount of hard work and time. Not only that, this guy is supposed to be working in Schlumberger, which is supposed to have a realllly busy job profile, and he found the time to write this book inside an year. Well maybe that explains why it is so lousy, but the guy, by all first hand accounts, was an idiot to begin with.

Varun tells me some guy from IIT D got a degree from a film school and returned to make a movie called 'formula 69', if I remember correctly. Then there's this one senior from my college who's completely left engineering and is presently researching snakes in the north east. He apparently did an internship in the jungles of the Western Ghats, and his work in the North East is supposed to be one of a kind, in that there has never ever been a study of the snakes in this region. It's supposed to be important enough to get multiple publications in Nature. He is currently living in a hut beside the Brahmputra, which is not cool, but you do have to admire the guy's conviction. Then there's this good friend in the college band, who is now going to Paris, and I suspect he will almost definitely join some sort of band there, successful or not is a different matter. And these are both people I know personally.

Plenty of people are coming back after doing Phd's abroad, at least according to an article I read recently, and rumours are that a 4 person team from IIT D came up with their own version of iPad, which is supposed to be much better, in that it has multi-tasking and multiple ports, and a bunch of other extra features.

So I suppose things are a lot different from even 5 years before...when we started college, and doing something different seems to be more and more normal. If you open up the option, then the number of careers you could switch to is infinite, isn't it?

This example is outside India, but still- I came across a professor's profile, he got his bachelors in mech engg from princeton, then got a masters in mech engg from stanford, then after an yr, he joined harvard law school, and is currently a professor in law, and his articles are cited by judges in the Supreme court, of the US. Though I suppose given the fact that law is so highly paid in the West, this would actually be something like IITians going into marketing or something after IIM. So it's not that remarkable.

Of course, the thing to remember is that all of these people must've been incredibly committed to what they were doing. I definitely can't imagine switching at this point, and I can't imagine I will be at any point in the future. I did think of law, after watching Boston Legal, and debating for a while. But I was brought to my senses by my lawyer sis, who told me it is way different than on TV-you won't be arguing big civil rights cases, mostly boring simple cases. And of course that I should try out my own field first.

This was thankfully way back in 2nd year, or I would have another thing to get confused about. Though I honestly don't think it's that different from switching from engineering to an MBA.

Blogging, podcasts, the US

It has really been a long time since I have written anything because I wanted to, in this blog or otherwise. I think I owe Varun something of an explanation why I haven't been blogging more frequently. Of course the normal thing to do would be just to ping him, but doesn't look like there are too many readers of this blog besides the two of us....at least regular readers.

Well if you look through the blog, you can immediately notice the line Varun takes- he is deeply philosophical-loves to do it. I wasn't even aware he has gotten so much into it. I suppose it's kind of a good thing. His thinking has really started to mature over time. But now when I want to write something, I generally want to write about the movies I watch, the news items I read, or hear and so on. I guess most of my ideas are borrowed, I wouldn't go so far as to say they're copied- but still I simply haven't ever thought up any "thought experiments", nor am I likely to do so. So I guess I think my blogs sound pretty banal when they sit besides Varun's.

Anyway, I'll try to make up for it, if that doesn't harm the tone of this blog. I am really pleased to see Varun has kept up with it, and the blog definitely seems to have got its own "identity", if that's the right word.

Anyway, the reason I decided to write a blog after so long is that my BTP is finally over, the only thing remaining is to write a paper on it. So I seem to have free time, and I thought I might as well use it productively.

Varun recently gave me a good tip: podcasts. I had no idea what they were until 2-3 months ago (my apologies to the tech-literate). I've had a great time browsing through a load of different varieties of them. I don't know the reason why, but the ones from Britain seem to be somehow way better than anything else anyone else produces, and it's mostly the BBC which produces them.

I've spent most of my college life watching American soaps, reading articles on time.com, nytimes, washington post etc. I wasn't aware that such a huge difference in cultures exists across the Atlantic. I had generally assumed that no matter how much fun they make of each other, they are after all, Westerners, sharing more or less the same values.

So I was listening to this comedy podcast the other day-I forget the name. This Brit was making fun of an American who claimed a First Amendment right to give a policeman a middle-finger- that is it was his right to freedom of expression. Funny as that was, the guy said this was possible only in America. They are probably the most obsessed with matters of principle, rights, freedom than any other country in the world. In fact, I think, it is actually possible George Bush was sincere when he said he wanted to go to Iraq to free the people. They really are that kind of people, and he was stupid enough to believe that he was the liberating hero too.

So then I did some rethinking about the soaps I watched, the kind of jokes I've picked up from them, and I discovered I've picked up a lot of stupid American ideas. First, and I think this is fairly common among others too, is this habit of referring to not just people, but objects, colours etc. as 'gay'. Now some things really do deserve the label, but I recently heard this guy critiquing Herman Hesse's Siddhartha. I really like the book, but according to him, it's gay, because Siddhartha's friend really admires him, and describes him accordingly. I've heard people do it with classical music, even hindi music at times, the opera-which I think has also been wrongly defamed by Americans and so on.

I think the idea is that whatever comes from Europe, has to be gay. I didn't realize this until I heard one die-hard Simpsons-Southpark fan express something similar.

Then there's the obsession with ideals. I was quite interested in the Capitalism-Marxism debate in my second year, before realizing how stupid the debate was. If you had been following the news over Obama's health care reform, people in America opposed it just because it's "European", and "it sounds socialist".

I have even started forming a theory that nearly all the modern stereotypes-of gays, chinese, indians, brits, africans etc. can all be traced back to the US.

Oh and a word on Star Trek and Star Wars- though I still like both franchises, I've become kind of disillusioned with them. I've only seen the Star Trek movies, so I'll take an example from Star Wars to explain. If you might remember, whichever planet they might land on, their would be these natives who would always be inferior to them, they would immediately challenge their top leaders, find something wrong with them, and show them a better way. Doesn't that sound more than a little American? Then there's only one black guy in the entire main cast, which totally doesn't make demographic sense (you're talking about the whole galaxy here), and the ones who are non-human, generally get killed off as soon as possible, preferably with no major fights. Only exception is Yoda, who, being primitive, is outsmarted by the genius of the enterprising Darth Sidius, and everyone has to be saved by the fair-haired, young, upstart and obviously American hero.

I might be overanalysing, but even if you consider the fact that Americans will make movies having their own audience in mind, it still doesn't make it right. America is very diverse, and its media should reflect that. Moreover, I think it reflects a really bad perspective of the rest of the world. And I think you can find enough evidence of that in their soaps and movies.

So you get the idea. I am in a really anti-US mood right now. I think I've rambled on enough. I'm off to sleep, and hopefully tomorrow this blog will still seem like it has some sort of coherence.