CP

In my last post, I talked about how I had so much to talk about the ‘Learning’ issue.

Not a day goes by when our batch is not told how “different” our batch is from all other batches. No professor looks satisfied with our batch. Sometimes, it may be a sense of making the people more committed. However, I feel that even as the first term is coming to an end, the commitment in our batch is not visible (at all).

I feel quite bad when a majority of the class has not prepared for the class. If this happens on some days, I can understand. Maybe there were some pressing issues or there was a large workload the previous day and so preparation was not possible. But this has become more of a rule rather than an exception. So, you have people who have decided that there is no use of preparing for the class and the breaks in between would be sufficient to do whatever it takes to get ‘prepared’ for the class.

As I am talking about this issue, it is important to bring the whole issue of the objective of coming to this institution. There is always the cardinal debate of the objective being ‘Learning’ vs. ‘Marks/Grades’. Though the two should be interlinked, the degree of linkage may not always be high and sometimes may be totally absent. Obviously, the approach of students would totally differ based on the objective they choose.

Personally, I had been following one of them. But then one of my friends made me realize that a bit of both is required. This helps not only sticking to your actual aim but also enhances it since giving some weightage to the other objective leads to better achievement of the first.

Anyways, whatever be the objective, I feel, a basic level of preparation for the class would help in getting to what you want. I have preference for one of the two and sincerely believe that everybody (or at least a majority or at least a few more of my batchmates) should have that having a major weight in their aim. But one thing I have realized is that you can force nothing on anyone. People only want to be taught what they like to be taught. So, if one does get an opportunity to gain from someone else’s experience, more often than not he/she would be reluctant to grasp/ask and might actually demotivate the other person to share.

I have talked so much about preparation; what actually is expected from us? We are not asked to get correct solutions before the class; we don’t have to be right to the second decimal place in our numbers. But what is expected is that we have read what has been told; we have dwelled into some issues/numbers and have some idea about what is happening. There are two advantages of this: 1. You will be able to understand what is happening in class 2. The discussion would happen at a much higher level.

But, as I was discussing with one of my friends, if you have one of the two above mentioned goals (‘Learning’ vs. ‘Marks/Grades’, and you are intelligent enough to guess which one of these I am talking about), the discussion cannot get above a particular level. But even that is fine, if we are actually able to reach that level. For the majority of the classes, this has not happened. And in most discussion based classes, we move to mediocrity.

I am no judge and probably I should not pass any judgments, but I am yet to see any kind of seriousness on this issue. We listen to all such kind of stuff and the next moment, we go back to where we belong. We start worrying about how to achieve our objective without considering if that is the “right” objective or we need to move around some stuff.