� Copyright Roshin Lal R, 2003. All rights reserved.
"Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education." - [Bertrand Russell]
synopsis |
2003 - Present | M.Sc (CS) | Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore |
1996 - 2000 | B.Tech (CS) | Govt. College of Engineering, Trivandrum |
1994 - 1996 | ISC | St. Thomas Residential School, Trivandrum |
1988 - 1994 | ICSE | St. Thomas Residential School, Trivandrum |
the dark ages |
Right from the beginning, I was an exceptional student. Exceptionally bad, that is. Consistently managing to get the lowest grades in class and putting fun and games above all things academic, I proved myself a tough challenge for all my teachers. Remedies involved enticements, punishments and when all else failed, strong messages to my parents with dire predictions of a bleak future.
My typical school day in this period would proceed as follows: get up with extreme reluctance after at least a dozen wake-up calls from my mother, a quick breakfast (and empty the milk down the sink when no one is looking), play games with other kids in the school bus, get into class and wait for the 10 minute break to rush out and play soccer (with 30 second to reach the field and 30 seconds back, game play lasted for approximately 9 minutes and you might be surprised to know that multiple goals were actually scored in this interval), get back to class and copy any homework due in the afternoon during some other class, gobble up the lunch in the first 10 minutes and rush out to play either soccer or cricket depending on which world cup was nearest, and repeat the above for the afternoon session. Once back home, spend enough time to throw bag and books into a corner and out on the streets again for a game of cricket until it gets so dark that the bowler cannot distinguish the wickets.
Needless to say, I will remember this as the happiest period in my life.
renaissance |
A change of school and passing years would bring me in contact with two new subjects and one person whose combined effect was to change the course of my life. The subjects were computer science and physics and the person was Mr. Narayanan Kutty, my physics instructor. For the first time in my life I realized that learning could be fun, and that education could be something other than memorizing arcane facts and writing bogus exams. I discovered the joy in asking questions and searching for answers, the fact that the very same questions have been asked and answered hundreds of years before by much better minds than mine did nothing to dampen the euphoria of answering the question on my own. Even the incorrect answers obtained for ninety nine percent of the questions could not overwhelm the happiness unleashed by the lone percent of cases when I was correct.
Another cause for joy was the discovery of programming. My earliest experience with programming would be that of getting our VCR to record a TV show in our absence. This feat quite surprised my father since he had made several abortive attempts previously to do the same. Since a VCR was quite a costly piece of equipment, it was off limits for a kid and I was not even supposed to know how to switch it on. After some years when I first saw a computer and heard the term "programming", the first thought that came to my mind was the realization of the infinite possibilities latent in this incredible product of human ingenuity.
It was during this period, when I was around 13 years old that I decided I wanted to be a computer scientist.
the great depression |
Having decided on my career, I obtained admission to the computer science department of the highly regarded engineering college in Trivandrum whose biggest attraction for me was that it was situated in my home town. Although I knew before I joined itself that the academic standards will not be up to premier Indian educational institutes like the IITs, the reality was much worse. Because the industry was booming, the college administration found it difficult to recruit and retain top talent. But for a few exceptions, the staff were in no way qualified to teach at a graduate level. The abysmal quality of teaching was met and even surpassed by the incredibly boring and mindless exam question papers. Suffice it to say that if you left your brain in a jar outside and walked into the exam hall with just a text book, you would have aced the test. Another unique characteristic of the questions were that they were mere rewordings of questions from countless other examinations conducted previously based on the same archaic syllabus. Many students (myself included) cleared exams just by studying specific solutions to problems included in all the previous 10 or 15 year exam papers which were conveniently available as a Xeroxed bundle at a store located right outside the college campus.
If lackluster teaching is the primary ailment, campus politics is a lightly dismissed scourge that eats away the future of hundreds of students. Unless remedial measures are not adopted soon, this old and prestigious institution will soon be reduced to nothing but a nostalgic memory in the minds of thousands of alumni who have written their success stories all around the world.
back to the future |
With a disappointing graduate education weighing on my mind, I jumped at the chance offered by TI to do my post graduation at the Indian Institute of Science - Bangalore, one of the best educational institutions in India. So, after three years of developing software as a profession, I was back in the classroom. This time my primary objective was to experience good education rather than get high grades as a stepping stone for a lucrative job.
Although there are areas in which even IISc teaching could be improved,
overall standard is an order of magnitude above my graduate college with many
courses being handled exceptionally well.