One year on the Road less taken....

An year ends, what can easily claim to be among the best times of my life. The college life, and particularly the hostel life, had been a totally new experience for me, and I have rejoiced every moment of the feast. I have made new friends and learned so much in many different ways. I can conclude it by saying just this : I have grown up a lot !!

But this was the first year, and as often the case is, it's not always the best yadrstick to measure your rest of the college life. After one year, it was just natural for me to ask myself again...one year ago...did I make the right choice ??

I'll tell you what it was like one year ago. One year ago, at this point of time, I was anxious and was in a big dilemma, just like many of those who were done with host of entrance examinations and were now on the needle head of situation as the results were slowly rolling out. I was confronted with something very similar. After cracking the JEE pathetically, I managed an Int. Msc in Applied Mathematics in IIT Roorkee. On the other hand, I had the option of IT in DCE. There were two paths, and go ask any normal delhiite, the choice was pretty much obvious.

IIT is IIT, but DCE isn't bad either. Any engineering aspirant knows that, especially someone belonging to Delhi. If he cannot break even into top 2000 in JEE, he'll be giving a serious thought of taking up something good in DCE/NSIT rather than chasing the IIT dream. That's how most Delhiites think. Come on, step into my shoes, or rather in my mind, and just see it for yourself.

'You love Delhi, so much that You can call yourself city-sick to some extent. If you take up this course, you'll be living in Delhi all the time !! Enjoying every moment of whatever wonderful is happening here. Damn !! you can make a girlfirend !! And Then you're getting IT in DCE, something that most of the crowd still fancy. IT, an extremely wonderful field, with best placements going on and most light course structure, how can anybody just leave it ? But hey, you are doing it!! And for what ?? An Msc. course in IIT Roorkee !! hey, that's not even an engineering degree and that's not even an IIT !! And buddy, it's Mathematics, for 5 years !! Yuck yuck yuck !! And lol...it's a first time course, you even don't know the course structure yet. Hell !! they haven't even designed it. And placements ?? You sure it's not for research...well it seems like that,...and those two year JAM guys don't seem to be making a lot of money either. And Mathematics department sucks there...maybe only after E&C. Friend !! Let's talk shop now !! Let's face it...FORGET IIT !!!'

Forgive my mind for being too hyper ( too many exclamation marks !!) but that was exactly the state of my mind at that time. And as you must have realized, any man with tiniest sense of logic would have happily opted for IT in DCE. But I didn't. I took the road less traveled, very less traveled. And to some measurement, I can posit it as the road totally untraveled. But why ? It wasn't out of adventure. Whatever logic you can conclude from babbles of my mind, it all fails on it's last two words: " Forget IIT !!!". That is something I can't do !! For two years I have rotted my ass on piles of books to get into IIT. I never thought what course I'll be getting there, but the driving force had been IIT and the life I will get there. It was IIT, my real aim, and not the further consequences and situations that will boil along with it. But my decision was not just based on emotional factors, it stood on pillars of hope and optimism, on a very new and thinking.

This was the time when got around a book called 'The World is Flat'. I have to admit that this book had been the most influential read in my life. I got to know so much going on in the world, and how new things are happening...actually how the world is going flat. What this book did was, it just confirmed some of my fears, like the non-linear relationship between education and industry. Today, a person is valued not because he maybe a king of one and may or may not be jack of some, but because he is a king of at least a few and a jack of some. Gone are the days when a mechanical engineer is required to build and design new cars and machinery and just take care of the technical know-how of his profession. Now he is expected to do a lot more than that. He is expected to organize resources much more efficiently, effectively lead people working under him, participate in the growth of organization, understand and optimize his role in global supply chain and have better understanding of economic forces that are today shaping a new world.

A MBA degree can help a lot, but it just don't end there. Today economic and scientific progress is governed by so complex processes, that everything is intermingled with each other. If you think that biology has no roles to play in aerospace technology or material sciences has no role to play with the browser you are using or any other connection like this, I'm sorry to inform you, but you have just been too ignorant till now !! You see, until there isn't a major breakthrough in material sciences, you can't expect new electronics to shape up, and until that happens, you can't expect any major hardware revolution which in turn can foster a software revolution which brings about You-tubes, Googles and your browsers. We have reached at such an height that all scientific and economics and even social processes have been so much entangled, that it needs a pro in lots of fields to take us up a notch higher. The machines build today for advanced medication requires just not the expertise in field of electronics, but also in biology. It's just an example and world today is full of it. That's why you see a lot of switch-overs these days. Most of the engineers end up in field of finance, because today companies require people who can better understand the planes or computers they are making, and hence apply suitable economics for better progress. And because the demand is way too more than supplies, placements are pretty hot.

Being in Applied Mathematics, I believe certain things can go in our favor. There are a lot of fields we can disperse in like Software, Finance, Economics, technical fields like aerospace or higher physics or mathematics. The choice is broad and the course seems promising over these aspects. The course offered to us has quite a lot in common with the successful Maths courses already in service at kharagpur and kanpur. I just hope it all turns out well for us. Of course, the success of the course will depend a lot on our batch and the guys here are simply talented. We can yield something nice, only if we are ready to get a bit more serious with acads. So I guess, It's time to rot some real ass over the texts.

Let's see how things work out !!!