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.