Stuck In An Organisational Psychology Lecture

The following was written in a state of agonising desperation and severe suffering.

I am currently holed up in IV LT2. I am supposed to be here for an organisational psychology lecture but all I hear are an old lady’s stories about her amateur driver and international conferences in Taiwan. I suppose that didn’t make much sense to you, the net-surfer who happens to look by some blogs occasionally. You can then imagine how much sense that makes to the student who has woken up at 7:50 am, skipped breakfast, pushed his way through the line to get the bus and finally made it to a pressure cooker of a classroom (the ventilation here, just in case you are lucky enough to have never stepped into a LT before) panting and sweating. Let’s keep that aside…..once again, I’m in some antiquated lecture theatre (more like the first thing that springs to mind when you hear ‘creaking infrastructure’ and ‘heat chamber’ together), the time is 8:34 am and I’m wondering what is it in the mind of this old lady in front of us that makes her ceaselessly go on, looping her sentences in a way that seems to never end, disregarding that half the first bench has fallen asleep, and utterly, almost criminally forgetting how fuming she would leave a class of over sixty after ending up having said the same thing over and over again.

So much for the context, I’d love to put in an excerpt or two from what was going on but that would require me hearing it, and that’s out of the question. I will try dwelling on what I’ve done and what can be done during such a lecture other than writing about such things. It must be noted here that most of the usual lecture pastimes (sleep, mobile games etc.) do not work in such an environment. The mind is too agitated at the gross injustice of it all to stay idle as in sleeping or to focus as in gaming. So, just a couple of minutes ago, I tried keeping a track of where are her arguments going. Not as the note-making, head-nodding ubiquitous geek but as the detached but observant armchair spectator. The chart I came up with looks lke this

motivation at workplace->75% attendence rule->course registration nitty grtties->story of how Dean once intervened in some registration affair->modernplace computerisation and how it makes life difficult for oldies like her->story of how one student’s father once complained against some registration issue->how students take her for granted->how her new driver takes her for granted->rant on ‘over registration’ (no clue)->and then all of a sudden, assignment details (a quantum leap if you ask me).

All this in ten minutes. Hard to digest, but true. After this I tried playing tic-tac-toe, but as explained earlier, conventional methods dont work that smoothly. So out came a notebook and pen and here I am now. As I write, some cronies have suddenly stood up. The teacher finally flings her purse round her arm, giving some parting one-liners. The class is over. People start walking out, and I sit here, wondering how to end this.

Homecoming

Only a few things make me as uncomfortable as I get when I’m asked what I’ve done in the vacations. Thats because the question forces me to come to terms with what I’ve really done then- nothing at all. Anyways, I’m finally back at IIT and was overwhelmed by a sense of homecoming when I reached here. If you manage to understand what getting used to a thing such as oDC is like and what spending three months without it is like , then you just might be able to grasp just an inkling of what coming back here and reconnecting feels like. However, the homecoming feeling quickly evaporated during my first lecture class. It was a 90 minute long lecture on organizational psychology (or orgy as we know it). I spent the first half hour in what will rank as one of my most sincere efforts ever to follow a lecture. The next half hour, I tried explaining my waning concentration that here was the chance to start from a clean slate this academic year. And then I spent most of the last half hour staring at the ceiling and wondering what to blog about. Back to square one I guess.

Nevertheless there is a distinct improvement in hostel life being a sophomore now. Now, I’m not the kind of guy who gets a kick out of making boys just a year younger than me (and some just as old) dance in their underwear or play some sadistic version of a buzzer round quiz (don’t ask). But the hesitant fleeting glances freshies throw at us, the continual ‘Good evening sir’ I keep hearing, (sometimes as many as 9 one after the other) and the dexterity or clumsiness with which they recite their ‘intro’ in ’shudh Hindi’ are the stuff good clean fun is made of. And these are just peripheral pleasures, what lies at the core of happiness is that I now get my water bottle filled by just waiting at the stairs for a stuttering, little freshie to come by.

Nothing much has changed here at IIT Delhi other than that the place seems to be more crowded than before. Or it could be just in my mind. Now three freshmen stay in a room as opposed to two earlier. They’ve done away with the middle room partition for that purpose. With another 9% OBC quota being implemented next year, I hope they don’t get any stupid ideas like denying us our single rooms in the third year. Plus we have IIT Punjab ‘operating out of’ our campus, they’ve taken a block of apartments somewhere here, from what I’ve heard. I have yet to meet a IITP student and with only 120 students, theirs is a ‘ghost’ existence here. The price we ordinary citizens pay for our power-hungry politicians’ election tactics.

Well, as far as the things I’m looking forward to are concerned, nothing deserves a special mention. On that note, bbye.

Wimbledon Final

After spending an entire Sunday on the couch tuned into you know what (I even saw the Borg-McEnroe final archive they were showing when it was raining) I decided to give writing match reviews a shot. So here goes nothing.

Disclaimer: Excuse me for what might seem like the unrefined use of tennis jargon at places below.

I remember seeing Nadal’s post match interview. The interviewer called the match “arguably one of the greatest matches in the history of Wimbledon finals”. Why be so politically correct ? John McEnroe called it “the greatest match I’ve ever witnessed” and I couldn’t agree more. The two best players in the world vying for the most prestiguous Grand Slam title ensured the quality of tennis was superlative. The setting was just right, an overcast afternoon at Centre Court, Wimbledon. The scoreboard at the end of the match (6-4,6-4,7-6,7-6,9-7) and the fact that four championship points (literally heart-stopping) were played (including the one that Nadal finally converted) leave me with little words to describe the kind of thriller the match was.

Speculations of a ‘mental block’ Federer had developed against Nadal after the French Open final thrashing, were rife when Federer started sluggishly, losing the first two sets 4-6,4-6. Then came the comeback of a champion. The third set rolled into a tiebreak, with Nadal just 2 points away from victory at one moment. But Federer’s dominating forehands and aces won him the tiebreaker 7-5.

The fourth set too went in a tiebreaker, with two match points for Nadal. Another champion performance by Federer in defending those and winning the tiebreaker meant the match was destined for a fifth set. The amazing thing about these players at this point was the mind numbing pressure on them in these tie breakers. Watching them made me so nervous, I wonder how it must’ve been for them. For Nadal it not only meant his first grass victory over Federer but also his first non-clay court Grand Slam title. For Federer it not only meant the end of a 65-match dominance over grass the kind of which the world hasn’t ever seen before but also losing out on breaking Borg’s record of five consecutive Wimbledon victories. On every match point in the fourth set the camera would close up on the players’ faces enabling us to see them furrow brows and clenche jaws in nerve straining focus. It suddenly struck me that this was more nervewracking than any movie, any IPL match I have ever seen, one of the best things I’ve ever seen on TV.

The fifth set should and will go down in history as one of the finest contests in sport. Both players remained rock solid under the pressure until they were locked 7-7. The game swayed from one to the other after that as Federer saved the thrid championship point. It was getting dark in the Centre court as the face-off reached another match point for Nadal. The Spaniard fell to the ground, flinging his racquet as Federer netted a forehand concluding what many are calling a ‘change of guard’ in tennis. We’ll consider that in a moment, but it was certainly the kind of match that must’ve added millions of tennis fans to the world.

A look at the unforced errors Federer made reveals that this was far from the best tennis he can play. Maybe the ‘mental block’ speculation has an element of truth in it. Firstly it’s Nadal who has the better record of 12-6 against Federer. Second comes the thrashing Federer took at the hands of the Spaniard at the Roland Garros final (Nadal won 6-1,6-3,6-0). A combination of these two factors can wreak havoc on one’s confidence. After all Fedex is a human being. But this surely isn’t something that’s happen for long, especially to a champion like Federer. As he put it himself ,”It’s a pity I couldn’t win it but I’ll be back next year”.

Why the IITs ?

The UPA government is in a state of unprecedented crisis, with the Left playing it’s brand of anti-US politics on the nuke deal and inflation figures spiking to a 13 year high. If the recent BJP victories in the state elections are anything to go by, things don’t look bright for the UPA in the coming elections. Hence, our netas resort to the kind of filth that’s been their lifebuoy for ages. After reserving half the IIT student seats, the proposal to do the same for the teachers’ posts doesn’t surprise. But contradicting any first impression I don’t think this diktat will influence the quality of incoming faculty in any great way. The fine points of the proposal say that the requirements for a faculty position are going to remain the way they are, with or without quota, and if the reserved seats aren’t filling to capacity (which is most likely to happen seeing the way reserved student seats are being filled) the order can be done way with after a year. To summarize, it is a display of vote-bank politics obscene enough to rival a New Year rave party in Goa. 

The proposal has ruffled many feathers, many of which already ruffled by the student reservation fiasco. Being a student of IIT Delhi myself, I wonder when and how did the IITs rub the HRD ministry the wrong way to deserve all this. The alumni plans to stage a peaceful protest this Saturday evening in Mumbai, Bangalore and Delhi.

Arbit thought #1

Just something i learnt at the gym the other day, if you’re counting how many times you’ve pulled weights – DONT think about the number.

Charity begins at home

Manmohan Singh’s recent appeal for austerity may have led to several ministers canceling their summer vacations, but ironically enough it’s Mr Singh’s travel bills that has left the taxpayer reeling the most. If you think that the PM’s establishment is large enough to justify a larger expense than that of other cabinet ministers (even if their expenses were put together) then you’re most probably right but chew on this : in the last decade, about Rs 371 crores were spent in chartering planes alone for the PM’s foreign trips. Rs 120 crores of that amount was spent ferrying Mr Singh around in 2005 and 2006. That’s one third of what was spent in the last 10 years. I don’t know about the voters but it may have surely left some ministers with canceled holidays pissed off.

Hello world!

I first decided to jump onto the blog bandwagon after seeing my friend’s immensely successful blog on computer game reviews. It suited him…….spending about more than 75% of your time on FPSs and RPGs does kinda make you an authority on games. But what amazed me was the kind of attention his opinion had started to gather. Now here was a complete layman (in the truest sense of the word) answering questions on anti aliasing and video refresh rates. Well, this blog doesn’t have such a specific tag….in fact right now I have no clue of what this blog is going to be about. Nevertheless here’s saying “Hello world !”.