An ode to my Alma-mater

Self-made engineers. Ever heard of that? Not unless you’re an engineer thyself.  Allow me to elaborate. As I sit in this classroom, for yet another long-drawn out and not-so-academically-fulfilling lecture, as I inch towards the last few days at VJTI, the laughter and light-hearted banter continues camouflaged under muffled voices  and giggles lest the HOD in the adjacent cabin mistakes it for a brouhaha session than a genuine lecture. At this juncture, I can’t help but look back in retrospect at the journey through the making of us engineers. Contrary to popular perception, that VJTI is geek haven, lemme break some long-held myths about this place that is considered by the fellow fraternity the mecca for all engineering aspirants. This place ain’t no mecca if you’re looking for quality education, but it is in case you’re looking for some perpetually intense competition and pressure to perform from your elite peers coz everyone here is either as intelligent as you or slightly more. But, the funny part is that VJTI or for that matter any college in Mumbai University(MU) has no role to play, whatsoever, in the arduous task of shaping, structuring or molding that oh-so-potential candidate into an engineer.

For starters, the lectures don’t take place at all, even if they do by a remote chance, they are just dull and dreary sleep-inducing presentations in semi-understandable jargon by vernacular professors ( or vernies as they are popularly known throughout the university). The labs are not conducted with half the expertise and sincerity that is expected off the state-of-the-art facilities which are a preliminary condition for engineering colleges across the city. So, the financial aid sanctioned by the university to colleges is just rusting in the labs in the form of ill-used apparatus and professors ill-equipped with regards to teaching. So, now you’re wondering how Mumbai University manages to produce the largest in strength and in fact 45% of the country’s best engineers. Seems like an insuperable feat to most. And even if they do manage to pull it off, howcome these engineers are efficiently running the power, infrastructure, technology and manufacturing sectors?

Uh Huh!!! Well, the term stated in the beginning is your answer to the above question. So, we have a chunk of engineering undergrads who are mentally prepared for some tough overhaul of their pre-conceived notions, well equipped with the will to face this uphill task all by themselves. I can safely corroborate this coz through my 4 years of engineering, I haven’t attended a cumulative 4 weeks of legitimate lectures or 4 months of labs meant for application development (a must while one is training to be an engineer) and I still managed to maintain a 1^st class without a single KT through 8 semesters (for the equally intellectual but less privileged counterparts , I’d consider a leeway of 2-3 KT’s to account for MU’s absolutely unpredictable marking scheme & pattern of checking). Yet, I’m an engineer in the making, quite comfortably having completed 6 live projects with a mega final year project in Java, a language that wasn’t even formally taught in the curriculum. Every fellow-engineer in the fraternity has a similar story to tell. So, this story isn’t mine. It’s the proud flagship story of every engineering graduate. So, we appear for exams without having undergone formal training in the relevant course and yet manage against all odds the elusive 40-mark milestone. That’s an engineer cut out for you from Mumbai University, the academia-proclaimed, university conferred self-made engineer. Rightly so!

PS: I wonder if I could’ve acquired the degree without paying a tuition fee of 2 lacs with all the above paraphernalia, with equal panache and ease, but then I would’ve missed out on the joys of the oh-so-great-college-life that I’d kill for when I’m 35+. (Who told you techies don’t know how to have fun?). So, I’m glad I went to college. Thank you, my alma mater. Thank you the apparently-inefficient-MU. I still adore you and I shall always love you!