An educational dream

Between the mid-eighties and the mid-nineties, my first school was one located in a small town in Orissa. I still have vivid memories of certain things there; the two mango trees, the bougainvillea tree right at the entrance, and the huge playground that smoked of dust. We did not have electric bells. A huge piece of metal used to hang from the branches of the mango tree, and the bell man would hop onto a paved wall, and bang the metal, hammer in hand, to ring the bell. Unsuspecting little children unaware of him around and playing happily would often get startled and start crying at the loud sound of metal that reached the far corners of the school, heralding the end of a class period.

For the longest time, I wanted to know where the nuns lived. One day, I got lost on purpose, and walked through a small garden to see a door slightly ajar. I peeped through, looking at a room with the most antique looking furniture and a huge piano sitting at a corner, with stained glass windows. They used to call it the parlor. This was also the time when I was beginning to read Bronte and Charles Dickens, and the room had looked straight out of one of these novels. I always thought that our nuns from the school had come here to teach from Ireland. Later, I learnt that most of them were from Kerala. Back then as a fourth grader, my secret desire was to convert to Christianity, become one of them, and spend my evenings reading at the parlor.

Last night, I had a very vivid dream. I dreamed that I was sitting on the ground by the trees with a few professors from Virginia, discussing research ideas, and a proposal we wanted to submit to the National Science Foundation. They had no inkling that this was my first school. Everything looked ten times vivid, there were greener and more mangoes on the trees, the oranges were really orange (although I do not remember an orange tree in school), and there were many more children playing around us. And sitting there by the shade of the trees, we discussed research ideas. In my dreams, we had transcended all barriers- country, visa, race, and language. I had gone back to where all the education had started. Of course when I woke up, the rational mind could not connect the dots and kept asking, "How is this possible?" But in my dreams, memories from my childhood and other recent memories had nicely merged into one single landscape.

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The dilemma of choice

A write up based on personal reflections.

In the year 1994, my father was transferred from a small town to a somewhat larger city a few hours away. Work being work, we had all decided to move with him. I was starting eighth grade, and my small school from the small town did not offer computer science as a subject then. But the bigger school that I was joining taught computer science as a compulsory subject from the sixth grade. Needless to say, my parents were worried.

When I joined the eighth grade, I started with collecting all the class notes, homework, and assignments worth two years. That was the first time I had ever typed on a computer. With the number of subjects we study in school, and the amount of things we learn, catching up on two years’ worth of learning was going to be a lot for me. I was neither terribly excited, nor discouraged. I just knew that I had to catch up. There was no other way out.

I put in a lot of hard work. Other than learning everything taught about Beginner’s All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code (BASIC) in school, the computer guy working in my father’s office recommended that I should join coaching classes. So I spent a hot summer going for computer classes in Link Road at 10 am four days a week during my 1.5 month long summer vacation. I got more exposure to the subject, more practice with working on a computer, and learnt about floppy discs and flow charts and binary code conversions. My performance in the first school exam was bad. I did not fail, but scored in the low sixties. By my next exam, I had moved up to the late eighties. Everyone was happy and relieved. At home, everyone saw it as a difficult situation that was overcome using hard work and interventions, a disaster prevented in due time. No one really saw it as a gateway to a wonderful career of possibilities.

I had enjoyed learning everything about computer science that year. When I moved to the ninth grade, we had to make a choice of taking computer science, economics, or home science. My father never interfered in what I should study, or how much I should study. My mother didn’t do it either. But in this particular case, she decided that I should study home science. She said that she would be able to help me with the subject, and since the ICSE (10^th boards) would be my first important exam, I should do everything to get maximum marks, no matter what I decide to study. My ICSE performance would determine whether or not I was able to get into a good college and study science.

Had this happened now, I would have politely told her, no thank you, please let me decide things for myself. But 20 years back, I did not have much perspective in life. I am not sure what I was thinking back then, and I was not even a lazy student who wanted to score good marks using short cuts. I now realize that my mother’s motivation to push me to study home science was well-meant, but solely based on the fear that what if I don’t do well studying computer science, since I have missed out on two years’ worth of knowledge. My improving grades in school did not convince her enough. I was not too sure about what I wanted, and somewhere down the line, her fear might have rubbed off on me. For much to everyone’s surprise, I opted for home science.

Although we talk about all subjects being equally important, we usually have a pre-conceived notion of their hierarchical importance. In India, science is valued more than the humanities, and an engineering degree is valued more than a pure science degree. Let’s face it. No society is free of biases or stereotypes. These biases are mostly governed by our future usefulness to the society when we seek jobs, or even making ourselves more marketable in the marriage industry. I have a lot of female friends who got a master degree because that would upgrade their status from getting an engineer husband to getting an IIT-graduate working in the US. We don’t live in an ideal world. So back in school, we had a trend too. The hierarchical choices of subjects based on the brightness of the students were computer science, economics, and home science respectively. And much to everyone’s surprise, I chose home science. My mother must have considered offering coconuts to the local deity that day.

Honestly, I did not know what I wanted to study. I liked studying everything. I was doing well in school. But my mother’s fear somehow became more real than my own confidence in acing a subject. At age 14, I was being asked to make a decision which I was told would affect my career for the rest of my life. And I did not want to make mistakes. So the decision was clear.

Did I enjoy studying home science? I sure did. I learnt about cleaning, stain removal, first aid, and safety measures. For my practical classes, I was expected to polish metal, arrange flowers, and bake. My mother mostly helped me in those projects. I have enough reasons to believe now that she influenced me so that she could do half my assignments on my behalf, for her enjoyment. Force and motion and atoms and molecules, she did not understand so much.

My teachers were surprised about my decision. And so were my friends. I used to hang out with the “computer science” gang of students, and when the bell rang for class, they would often forget and wonder why I was not coming with them to the computer lab. I never had any associations about studying a “less challenging” subject. I was scoring in the nineties, getting help from my mother, and was enjoying hanging out with a new set of friends. I even passed the ICSE with flying colors, scoring in the higher nineties, and easily got admitted to the science stream after the tenth grade. For ISC (11^th and 12^th grades), my new school in Calcutta (we had moved once again) only had a choice between biology or computer science, physics, chemistry, and mathematics being compulsory for all science students. It became even easier to make my choice. Students who wanted to be doctors opted for biology, and the future engineers chose computer science. I didn’t know what I wanted to become, but biology was my default choice.

Twenty years ago, my mother had influenced my decision with the best of her intentions that I score maximum marks in the exams. So the short-term interests were served. But did it serve me long time? I am afraid not. For most of the things I learnt in those two years studying home science, I do not apply in my life anymore. I don’t arrange flowers, I use a washing machine to remove stains, and I learnt all my cooking after moving to the US. There is nothing I need for my home that I cannot Google and find out. I know my acids from my bases for home remedies, and what I don’t know, the internet knows. So I need nothing that I learnt then.

However, this decision permanently steered me away from a whole new world of possibilities, and closed the door to studying computer science. I could have grown up to become a computer scientist. I could have been working at the Mountain View office of Google. I could be writing codes and inventing languages for a living. I could be a computer science professor by now. I could be doing many things right now that I am not solely because I was never exposed to this field. In the purpose of serving the short-term interests of better grades, my long-term interests were screwed. Now that did not prevent me from moving to the US, getting a PhD or working as a researcher. But something that could be did not become, because I did not know any better. And it is a universally recognized fact that a degree in computer science increases your probability of getting a better paid job, having many more opportunities of employment, rubbing shoulders with some really smart people, and never having to worry about visa issues. I am not saying that I cannot learn whatever programming I need to learn now to get my job done. But it is too late for me to know how my life would be different if I had studied computer science as a subject in school.

I often tend to reflect on my life experiences to understand what could be done better. And from this incident, I have learnt that closing our heart and mind to learning something just because it may not serve our short term interests is wrong. You don’t take that structural equation modeling (SEM) class in graduate school because it is tough, and is not a requirement to graduate. However, will taking that course make you more marketable when you look for a job in future? Will it give you skills that your peers will not have? Will it open the doors to exploring newer research possibilities? The aim of learning something cannot be either good grades or graduating on time. But that perspective, that wisdom, I have gained at this age.

If life ever had an undo button, I know that right now, we would be back to 1995, sitting in the living room. I would tell my parents that I am graduating to the ninth grade soon, and will need to choose between taking computer science, economics, or home science. My father would look up from reading the newspaper and tell me that I should do what I think is the best. My mother would tell me that I should study home science so that she can help me with it. And I would smile, letting her know that I have decided to study computer science, and ask her not to be afraid about me failing.

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Graduate Application in Public Health: A Personal Insight into the US Application System

Applying for a graduate degree in public health in the US: My few cents on the application process.

The application process for a PhD in public health has changed considerably since I applied last, about 8 years ago. If this is how arduous it was when I applied, I don’t think that I’d have had the energy or the money to apply then.

Back then

·         You went through school websites and made a list of schools you wanted to apply to, based on the fit between the school and your research interests.

·         You took the standardized exams (GRE and TOEFL).

·         You paid an application fee for each school, that varied anywhere between $30-$60.

·         You applied separately to each school. Wrote a customized statement of purpose (SOP) for each school. You sent them your standardized scores and transcripts. You sent them the letters of recommendations from your professors. You prayed for a few months that you made it to the school of your choice, with financial support, of course.

And now

Most of the schools of public health (SPH) have a central application system now- The Schools of Public Health Application Service (SOPHAS). Theoretically, it means that instead of making six separate applications to the six schools you apply to (six being a fictitious number), you make one central application and specify the names of the schools you want your applications to be sent to. You apply once, you pay once (the application fee depending on the number of schools), and you are done. Ideally, this is supposed to make your life easier. But there are several reasons this is not the case.

Why SOPHAS does not always make your life easy?

1.      Not all institutions are a part of SOPHAS

For example, if you apply for a DrPH degree at Johns Hopkins, you need to make a separate application, pay the fee separately, and send in the documents (transcripts, recommendation letters, etc.) separately. So if you are applying to six schools, five out of which do not participate in SOPHAS and one does, SOPHAS will not help you much. Note that if a particular school goes the SOPAHS way, you have to apply through SOPHAS. It is compulsory.

2.       Application fee

Just because you apply once does not mean that you pay once. There is a two-pronged challenge to this situation. First, your application fee increases non-linearly based on the number of schools you apply to. You pay $120 for the first school, and then pay an additional $45 per school (Link). Again, from the previous logic, if you are applying to six schools, five out of which do not participate in SOPHAS and one does, you will incur a financial loss. Second, just because you pay a SOPHAS fee does not mean you are exempt from the application fee. Many schools will charge you a separate application fee, although you have paid the SOPHAS fee. For example, University of California at Berkeley mandates you to pay an additional $80 application fee along with the SOPHAS application fee. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has an additional $85 application fee. If I am making a centralized application system, I do not see why I need to pay additional money to schools individually. Of course not all schools do that. For example, the University of Texas at Houston requires you to pay no additional fee.

3.      Dual application

In addition to the SOPHAS application, many schools require you to fill out an additional application form. This means that you go through the same process of filling out the application form, twice per school. Many of us who have gone through the process are aware of the huge amount of time and patience this requires, filling out mundane information like name and address, courses taken, GPAs, etc. Each school requires a separate SOP customized for it. Doing an application twice isn’t remotely funny. It beats the purpose of applying through a centralized application system.

4.      Timeline

The way things work is, you apply to SOPHAS. SOPHAS verifies all your information and mails your application to the respective schools. In the meantime, you make separate applications to schools (if required). Now here is the catch. SOPHAS will not mail your applications unless they are complete. For example, SOPHAS has to receive ALL the official transcripts and at least two out of three recommendation letters, and your application needs to be complete before it will mail your application. So if your school has an application deadline of December 1, you cannot proceed based on a December 1 timeframe. SOPHAS will have to receive the complete application, application fee, and supporting documents (transcripts, 2 recommendation letters, etc.) weeks in advance to be able to process it and make it on time for the December 1 deadline. What this means is, a December 1 deadline does not mean that you have until November 30 to make an application. What it means is, to be on the safer side, you must finish the application by October, and then SOPHAS will take a few weeks to determine that your application is complete before it will mail your applications by the December 1 deadline.

5.      International transcripts

If you are an international student, you need your transcripts evaluated by the World Education Services. It is mandatory. What this means is, you send a sealed, official copy of your transcript to WES weeks in advance, pay an application fee, and wait. WES evaluates your transcripts, converts it into American grades, and mails them to SOPHAS or the non-SOPHAS-participating universities. The good news is, you do not individually need to mail your transcripts to separate institutions (unless you get admitted to a school, which is when you send that school an official copy of your transcript again). The bad news is, transcript evaluation takes time and money, and is mandatory, no matter how many additional US degrees you have piled on. For example, if you have two master’s degrees, one from a foreign institution and one from the US, you have to get the foreign transcript evaluated. You cannot say that since I have a master degree from the US as well, I want them to consider my US transcript and not my international transcript. Also, you pay $160 for the application, and then for each institution to want these transcripts sent to, you pay an additional $30/school and $7/school postage. If you want to expedite the process, you pay more. Then there is Fedex/postage fees. If you want to add more schools after you initiated your $160 application process, you pay more. WES takes a few weeks to evaluate your transcripts, after which, it sends the evaluation report to SOPHAS, after which, SOPHAS sends it to the respective schools. If I were to show this process diagrammatically, it will look like:

Applicant à WES à SOPHAS à School

With each extra arrow, you add a few weeks of processing time, and a few hundred dollars to the application process.

Why SOPHAS works?

I feel that SOPHAS complicates your application process. Despite this, the only advantage to this system is- The recommendation letters need to be sent just once. Even if a school wants you to make another application in addition to SOPHAS, it does not require those recommendation letters to be sent again. But then, if you have a lot of non-SOPHAS-participating institutions in your kitty, the recommendation letter advantage does not work in your favor.

What it should be ideally?

A centralized application system should mean applying once, and paying once. Either all schools use SOPHAS, or none of them use it.

My two cents:

Cent one: Start early.

With the number of steps it will require to complete your application, and the amount of jumping through the hoops, I’d strongly recommend that you start applying at least 2-3 months before the deadline.

Cent two: Be prepared to spend a lot of money.

SOPHAS needs its application fees, which increases with the number of schools you apply to. Then, many schools require you to pay additional application fee. WES will require additional fees to evaluate your international transcripts. Then there are costs for postage, fedex, and other miscellany. If you are applying to six schools, be prepared to be staring at a ballpark figure of $1000 dollars, give or take a few hundred.

Note: I do not vouch for the factual accuracy of the information presented in this article. The views and opinions expressed here are solely mine, based on my examination of the SPH application process for professional interests. I have no professional affiliation with any of the organizations or institutions mentioned in this post. This article should only be used as a guideline to time your application.

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In press

            Today, I signed the agreement form for my paper, the first one to be published where I am the first author. And while I should be doing a victory dance, tap dance, lap dance, any kind of dance, I feel neither happy, nor sad.

            I had written this paper two summers ago, and ever since, it has seen multiple rejects. The reviews were pretty harsh every time, and I still vividly remember the first time it was rejected. Call it professional naivete, but I had a misconception that this was a great paper, my first and best brainchild, and should not have been rejected. I cried, consulted, went and talked to people about their first rejections, and some of them said that they still have papers sitting on their shelves that have never seen the light of the day (and probably never will). My heart sank.

            Since then, I pledged that I will try my best to get it published. I gave it a few months of break, and took a stab at it with renewed vigor. I rewrote it almost entirely, added some more data analysis, and emotionally distanced myself from it, my theory being that things happen when you detach yourself from the expectation of outcome. Not entirely scientifically proven, but I believe that if you can actually distance yourself sufficiently from an outcome (and not just pretend that you have distanced yourself), your failures will stop bothering you, and even if they don’t see fruition, you would have stopped caring by then. And then last April I went to San Francisco for a conference, met an editor (another reason why you should not spend time sightseeing during conferences), and things fell in place. After five more months of back and forth correspondences and editing, it finally got accepted. It might not be in one of my dream journals, but it is still something worth a few lines on my CV. And by now, I have matured enough to know that this paper is not my best work either.

            All this makes me think about the futility of using the number of publications as a productivity measurement currency in academia. Years go by from the time you conceive an idea in your head to the time you see it in print. The process is arduous and painstaking, to say the least. I am not even considering fraud where someone in the lab steals your idea or takes undue credit. And then we critique other people’s papers in classes, saying they did not do it well and the study is old and will not be relevant ten years down the line. No experiment is perfect, even the world we live in is not perfect. This is social science research after all, and people change. Then what is the point of using publications as a yardstick to measure success? It takes years of mastery, rounds of edits and rejects, heartbreaks, and tears, and this research may not be relevant in the future anyway. Then why not measure a researcher’s worth using more tangible measures?

As you can see, I’m rather feeling philosophical today.  

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A PhD Post

Mentorship is a two-way process, where you shape your adviser as he shapes you. I am living proof of that. The last few weeks have been the turning point of my PhD. For those of you who do not know, I am at the fag end of my second year in the PhD program. This is when you are done with your coursework, and are beginning to think of some nice ideas, one of which could potentially turn into a dissertation. In my field of research, we usually do two kinds of studies- qualitative and quantitative. There is a third kind, the mixed-methods approach, where you mix both qualitative and quantitative data to validate each other. Quantitative studies heavily rely on data analyzed through statistics and number crunching, while qualitative studies rely on making meaning of the experiences of people through observations, interviews, focus group discussions, ethnography studies, et cetera. One approach is not necessarily better than the other, and you need to understand both methods in order to address a research question well.

            My research group is heavy on quantitative analysis. There are a couple of reasons for that. Your sample size can be way larger in a quantitative data set (tens of thousands sometimes), the sophistication of the statistical software can make you run analyses in less time, and overall, your rate of publication is higher when you do quantitative work. Clearly, the numbers speak for themselves, and that is why my group has always relied on quantitative dissertations.

            I was expected to do a quantitative dissertation from day one. My adviser is a hard taskmaster and makes you takes every possible course on methodology. It is hard, doing all that work, and I have seen myself screaming through semesters when I was taking four methods courses at a time. In graduate school, taking four courses per semester is a challenge; you can imagine what taking four methods courses would be like. I have taken the entire 3-series qualitative coursework, 5-series quantitative coursework, and various other courses related to item response theory, multilevel modeling, and so on. I have had to learn using Stata, SPSS, Genova, NVivo, and Atlas Ti from scratch. Anyway, I ended up taking a lot of these quant courses, and realized my heart was not really in there. I could run regression models and stuff, I could learn to live with that, but not love that. On the other hand, I took the qualitative courses and loved them.

            The first time my adviser learned about my newfound love for qualitative analysis, he asked me to change advisers. Clearly this is what none of his students had done before, and he was skeptical. I would be crazy to change advisers at this stage, I love this research group, so I assured him that I would do a quantitative dissertation. We were collecting a lot of qualitative data for an NIH funded study, and with my background in the biosciences and public health, I found myself attracted to that data. I would randomly do some preliminary analysis, while still looking for a quantitative research idea. This went on for a few more months. My adviser was supposed to go to an annual conference in California, a big one for sure, and I asked him if I could come. He said no, and then gave it a thought and asked me what I would do there. I said I had done some preliminary analysis and could present it to him, so that he could decide. I told him that it was qualitative data analysis. I just wanted to attend the conference and visit California, hoping to make some contacts there. I did not hope for anymore.

            The adviser gave me an evening, and asked me to present my data to him the next morning. I had an evening, which is nothing when you have to present your findings. People spend days preparing their presentations. He said that I could come with him if I could impress him. I spent that evening putting some more thought and rationale into my data analysis, and presented it to him next morning sharp at 10 am. He had some thoughts, he asked some questions, and told me to do some more. He was about to leave when I asked him if I could come to California. He told me I am on board.

            I was thrilled. I spent more time into this analysis, aware that I will have to soon go back to my quantitative dissertation idea. I kept working hard at this and showing him my analysis, knowing that I had a very limited amount of time with this dataset. I still did not have a dissertation idea.

            About 2 weeks ago, my adviser approved of me doing either a wholly qualitative dissertation, or a mixed-method dissertation. He told me that I have changed his opinion about what his graduate students’ dissertation profile should look like, replete with quantitative data analysis. He reminded me of the risks I am taking being the first one in his team to do qualitative work. This has been the single most pivotal moment in my PhD career. From the day when he asked me to change advisers because I liked qualitative work to this day when he said I will be the first one in his team to do something new, I have come a long way from where I was. I never really had any expectation of him changing his mind. However, I kept doing something I am good at, and things unfolded for me serendipitously.

            I have secured a place in the California conference. I have finally decided on my dissertation topic, after 6 months of banging my head against the wall. Most importantly, I have realized that although there is a prescribed route to success that everyone before me has followed, there is also value in determining my own way based on my interests without taking the road stalwarts have taken before me. I will carve out my own niche, doing something my group has never done before. It may or may not be kick ass, like Eric Cartman would say. However, that for me is the true essence of education- authenticity, uniqueness, and doing something different with all my love.

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Carrier Thoughts

As a researcher in education, I make a living these days learning skills to familiarize myself with educational issues. This means that while in the short run, I can identify educational issues, in the long run, I should be will be able to come up with workable solutions for them. One of my not so many strengths in this field is the exposure I have had to the Indian system of education for 25 years, that gives me a somewhat unique perspective on things (or so I like to think). For the rest of this post, I will blabber about things in context to the Indian educational system. Kudos to you if you have enough patience to sit through the end of this post. You don’t have to, especially because it is a Friday night (and not all souls need to work on bettering the educational system alone in the lab on a Friday night), but your opinion on this will be encouraging.

The choice of science as a career is as much a social choice as an individual choice. Opting for science is usually, but not always a conscious decision at the individual level. It happens through layers of conditioning at the individual, family, community, and societal level. In Indian communities more renowned as close-knit communities, a career choice is usually made based upon individual preferences, peer pressure, family values, and even societal obligations. This means you aim for that coveted seat in an IIM not only because you want it, but also because your papa, mama, chacha, dada, bua, tai, and perhaps even the bai and the doodhwaala wants it for you. For some students, choosing science is a way of fulfilling one’s quest of gaining an understanding of physical phenomena through observations, experimentation, and inferences (there was very few students exclusively in this category I would think, the last one being Albert Einstein, who was not Indian). For others, choosing science is a way of meeting one’s individual goal of a perceived notion of a better and successful career leading to better employment (and sometimes most of the times better matrimonial) opportunities. While personal interest plays a major role in students choosing a career, other amalgamating factors familial, socio-cultural, economic, and institutional in nature play a significant role in influencing their career choices.

However, not all students who choose sciences are a good fit to the programs of their choice (how else do you explain science in high school followed by say bachelors in English?). This leads to high number of professional program attrition and significant dissatisfaction and failure after investing time and money. It would thus be useful to get a broader perspective of the personal, familial, and societal factors influencing an individual’s career decision.

Alternatively, it is essential to understand the factors that lead students to reject science as a career option. Does fear of mathematics lead students to opt out of sciences in college even though they were interested in physics or computer sciences? Is fear of numbers a deterrent factor, so much so that you ended up studying say Hindi even though you wanted to study statistics? Does studying science always lead to better employment opportunities and a more fulfilling life? Is individual perception of a successful career choice a function of one’s income (the general perception being science students end up with higher paying jobs than non-science students)? An in-depth understanding of these perceptions evolving around students and society can help educationists understand the gamut of factors that students as decision makers consider before making a conscious career choice. The reason? To maximize the number of students who make conscious career decisions and succeed without having to opt out of a specialization before finishing their degree.

The other pressing problem I can think of would be the underrepresentation of women in certain branches of science, especially engineering. Shall we blame it on the patriarchial society as always, or try to investigate if there are motivational issues as well? Whatever it is, the skewed nature of gender distribution in certain branches of science is disturbing.

The overarching question that emerges is whether social status, better paying jobs, and interest in science are the main reasons why students study science. The overall aim? Maybe to ensure that students are more aware of their career choices when they make them. Maybe to encourage more students to take up sciences through effective teaching methods. Maybe to ensure that students make career choices not only based on social perception but also through interests. Maybe to ensure that ideally, “selection” and not “elimination” is the criteria for education. Or maybe to take a break and think of something different on a Friday evening when others have a life and you are slogging alone in the lab for your exams, fooling yourself into believing that someday YOU will be that educationist who will bring about radical changes (for good hopefully), who the society will look up to.

On this note, I will leave you to carry these ideas in your head and think about them (hence the title of the post, “carrier thoughts”). Or maybe don’t bother. Go enjoy that drink with friends while you still have a life J

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Does Alma Mat(t)er?

I was asked the other day if I felt nostalgic about my alma mater, the institutions in Kolkata I did my bachelors and masters from. Was I planning to visit them during this trip to Kolkata. My answer to both questions were, Hell, NO !!!

My passionate NO must have confused my friend somewhat, and frankly it surprised me too. So I thought it would be a good idea to write about it.

Till date, I have studied in 3 schools, 2 colleges under the university for bachelors and masters, and one institution in the US.

Schools, I definitely feel nostalgic about. I miss the churches, the sisters, the discipline, the friends, the school assembly, and all those thing we did as children and starry eyed teenagers. My US alma mater- it’s too soon to miss it. However my colleges are a different story. As a teenager fresh out of high school, I got the rudest shock when I entered college. The process of getting into a decent college was as grueling as getting into an IIT, but only without it’s benefits of a secure career later. For back then (and now perhaps), colleges under the University of Calcutta have no respect or consideration for students from ISC/CBSE boards. Back then, for every 40 or more students from the state board getting in, only 2-4 students from “other boards” would get in. We were definitely the “scheduled castes” amongst the lot of new comers, only with lesser respect and even lesser rights. No wonder more than half my high school mates had fled to Bangalore, even taking the “donation route” to get into the lesser known institutions in and around South India rather than staying in Kolkata.

The next shock awaited me as I started college. It was a complete culture shock, getting along with the fellow students, professors, the kind of syllabus and examination patterns. Nothing matched up to my fantasy of a college life derived mainly from Bollywood, with hunks riding bikes and classes being fun. The boys and their social skills were hopeless, and barely deserved even a smile. The class would predominantly consist of “Bangla-medium” students who had no clue of spellings or grammar, and it was a nightmare to get the class notes right if I ever missed classes. The professors themselves (mostly) was no less, trying to gravitate to Bengali during lectures whenever they could. My first class in Botany was a nightmare because the professor taught in Bengali for the entire class and I had no clue what “Shalakshanslesh” was till mother told me it meant photosynthesis. St. Xavier’s would have probably been my kind of college but they didn’t teach Biology then and I wasn’t willing to move to something like Physics or Math just because it was taught at St. Xavier’s.

The mode of teaching was another disaster. Most professors spent hours dictating notes photocopied from some nicely covered anonymous textbook they wouldn’t name lest we locate the mines those wonderful gems of knowledge came from. We were told from day 1 that the students at Presidency College better colleges would have an upper hand since they were good enough to make it to Presidency College better colleges, and no matter how well we did, we would always get lower marks than them. There were rumors of university questions being drafted by Presidency College professors from well known colleges, and unless you found the “right people” to increase your exam marks from to take tuitions from, you had to be content with a mediocre performance. Only a handful could score a first class (60%) and those that scored less had no chance of making it to the university for a masters.

The examinations were a disaster in itself, always held in the middle of the summer that dragged for months with huge breaks in between. It was like playing an even longer and boring version of test series cricket. Exams never happened in your own college, you were sent to some Godforsaken college in the middle of nowhere to go write your papers. It wasn’t just a test of knowledge, it was a test of nerves. 8 honors papers, 6 pass papers, and other papers on English and environmental sciences that students mostly passed studying from “guide books”. Professors on exam duty often snoozed or chit chatted in halls, and moved at a snail’s pace and often frowned and scowled if you asked for extra sheets of paper. We were sufficiently forewarned that a situation might arise where we didn’t understand the question at all, because it often happened that the person framing questions had no idea what the syllabus was. While the best written answers would score a 6.5 on 10, the average answers would range from 3-5 on 10 (which meant the effort to score 65% is double the effort to score 50%, and one shouldn’t ever hope for getting something like an 80%).

The practical classes were a nightmare in itself, with the lab reeking of decomposing stuff all the time. I wonder what good it did to me that I learnt to dissect and display the pituitary gland of a fish or the male reproductive system of the cockroach, or the fact that I was taught to distinguish chicken bones from snake bones. I seriously wonder how it has helped me knowing these skills in the last 10 years.

I never dated a guy from college. I would look at those boys and girls bunking classes and chatting all day in front of the college gate and marvel at these specimens and their scintillating future. It’s not that I’ve never bunked classes to watch a movie, but some faces were perennially found in front of the college gates or in the students’ union rooms (Union-baazi being another thing I kept away from). I’d ponder over my insecurities as a graduate out of my university, possibly jobless or trying to adjust in a job environment where people spoke only in Bengali and scowled at people who spoke in English. I wonder how it’d feel to be posted to some remote village with a teaching position. They often said that unless you had lots of money, a college principal for a father, the right political connections to back you up, or all the three, you were finished. I couldn’t date a guy who was in as much shit as I was in, his future not secure for lack of the right connections or because he happened to study in this university.

I thought I’d take 3 years of this and get going. I could get into a good masters program in Delhi. I made it to BHU but then again my university didn’t publish my results on time and BHU refused to admit students whose results were not out by a certain date. So I was back to Kolkata for a masters, ready for another 2 years of being grilled. This time I couldn’t break free, but the next time, I had to.

Students in my masters class prepared for the NET/GATE/IAS/CAT exams, but I knew that was not for me. I didn’t really know what I wanted for myself, but I knew what I definitely didn’t want for me. So I started dreaming of a US school, a place where I hear there were no distinctions based on your background, the power game was more fair, and the probability of making up answers for a question I didn’t even understand was less. The college felt like a prison and I knew US was my only escape route, even if I was going to some remote corner of North Dakota or Alabama (which thankfully I didn’t). I bunked classes and used that time to prepare for GRE. The process from applying to getting there was so costly that I couldn’t afford to screw up a single step. Even then, I had quite some adventure running around to get recommendations from the same professors from college who no one in the right mind would want to go to. I barely interacted with the students in my class, most of who were girls who did a masters because it would get them a husband with a better profile than that they would get with a bachelors degree.

The day I made it to the US, I knew I would never ever want to come back and visit these institutions again. I meet people with fond memories of their undergraduate institutions, claiming that they attribute their basic learning to their undergraduate institutions back in India. I am afraid that is not my story. Even as I travel by the roads and places where my college was located, I feel washed with dread and unpleasant memories of insecurity I felt in my early 20s, not knowing if the future had anything worth looking forward to. When I meet old friends from school on Facebook, I jump with joy. However when I see friends from college, I don’t really feel much joy or curiosity. My college boasted of something like “We teach students so well, they make it to the US” during a counseling session for the newcomers to lure them into joining the college. This was after I got into a US school. I can claim any day that my college had nothing to do with helping me get into a US school. If anything, the insecurity and the frustration it caused me gave me the necessary push to “break-free” and get into a good US school.

So back to the question, no, I don’t think I am interested in visiting my old colleges (though I have visited my ex-school where I worked multiple times). I have nothing to show off or prove to them. I and my college don’t really have any differences, but over the years, we have developed a certain indifference.

sunshine

Test of Patience

I would never know the reason why admissions committee across the US decided that a masters degree from a US institution doesn’t exempt one from taking the TOEFL. One needs to have a bachelors degree as well as a masters degree from a US institution to be exempted from the TOEFL. What this means is that 21 years of my study in English, including the 2 years of masters in the US was not enough to convince people that I am well versed in English. The TOEFL scores expire every 2 years. Thus I was supposed to take the exam again.

My own alma mater told me they would reject my application unless a new TOEFL score was presented. This was when they had a copy of my almost perfect TOEFL score from 2005.

It was not so much the difficulty of the exam as it was the hassle of taking it again.

First, I was surprised to find that they had increased the fee to $170. Now that is a LOT of money to prove that you can understand English. Second, I didn’t find a single available date in my city for the next 4 months. This meant I had to drive to the nearest city that had an earlier date. The earlier date again turned out to be a 2 month wait. And the nearest city I could take it was in the neighboring state of Oregon, almost 200 miles or a 3 hour drive away. And the only time slot available was 7:30 in the morning.

You get the picture, right?

It wasn’t a test of my English. It was a test of my patience.

The pattern of the test was quite different from what I remembered the last time. First, there were now four sections instead of 3 – comprehension, listening, speaking, and writing. Second, the test seemed lengthier than it used to be. They gave me 5 passages in the comprehension alone, with 14 questions each. That sums up to 70 questions. The listening section had 3 passages with 17 questions each. That was 51 questions already. The speaking test was a new addition and had 6 passages. The writing section had 2 tasks, compared to the last time when there was 1. Difficulty-wise I don’t know, but more than that, it was an exhausting, five hour long exam. It started at 7:30 am and dragged until after noon.

And then they gave me two choices. Do you want to accept your score? Do you want to reject your score?
With a thudding heart, I clicked on the ACCEPT button.

Are you sure? It next asked me.

YES YES YES … I wanted to scream. I clicked on the YES button again.

Congratulations. You have successfully completed the test. Scores will be sent in 3 weeks.
What the …….

This isn’t a test of my English. This is a test of my patience.

sunshine

Convocation

I hadn’t really realized the impact of what I was about to feel till I had reached the venue to collect my convocation gear. It was a crowd out there, with people busy distributing, collecting, or posing in their gowns. I held the packet they gave me, with everything they had put- my convocation gown and cap, and the numerous other things I was entitled to as an alumni- free passes for football matches I was never going to attend, free coupons at the nearby Mexican eateries, and a car license plate with my status of being an alumni imprinted on it. I have never had a convocation before. Needless to say, the feeling was very new, and “foreign” to me. I came from a place where you were just another face among the thousands of other people getting their degrees. Some professors remembered your face only if you got famous in the process, made it to the US, were the minister’s daughter, or something like that. I came from a place where professors had no official email ids, and some of them still wrote about you being “known to have a good character” in their recommendation letters.

I held my gown for a long time in the restroom, waiting to change for the photo shoot. The first time I tried, I could not even wear it properly. Then there was the cap with the tassel and “2008” marked on it. I was to keep this with me forever, so that the future generations in my family could remember what a luminary I had been. A good soul in the restroom offered to help me wear the gown properly. Within minutes, they had asked me to look at a certain angle at a certain imaginary dot on the wall, and my photo was clicked. Back in India, the only people I had seen being convoked are the graduates from IITs or IIMs, whose photos their moms and our neighbors proudly showed of. I had always wondered how cool it must feel to prance around in one of these attires while your mom showed off your picture to the other neighbors. Now, I knew.

The convocation was still a week away, but I could not get enough of the excitement after that. I was not really prepared for what to expect during my convocation. Then there were ceremonies organized by the school, where they reiterated how important and invaluable I have been to the program. I listened to them in amazement, wondering what was there to make a big deal out of it. Blame it on the place I hail from, where unless you are the topper or the daughter of a minister (or both usually), you fade out into the crowd of nothingness.

With pride, I stood on stage in my blue sari, the symbol of my Indian-ness, that had taken me a good half an hour to wear without help. I was the sole representative of India in the departmental ceremony. On the main day, I proudly cat-walked the outdoor stadium in my gown, smiling, waving, and throwing flying kisses to imaginary people like the others did as if I was some Miss.Universe in the making. No words can describe the thrill and the sense of worthiness you feel when you go up the stage in front of a packed stadium and shake hands with the dean. Photos were clicked and congratulatory wishes offered, champagne flowed, the smell of good food wafted the air, my advisor and chair patted my back and congratulated me, friends hugged me and offered me pretty floral bouquets, and I took in everything, feeling like a celebrity. Gifts and cards have been pouring in ever since, and my home looks like a Botanical garden and a gift shop now.

It took me back to the days in India when mom and dad had a different future planned for me. I am sure that their intentions were noble and well-meant. But as a 22 year old, all scared and confused and not knowing what to do in life, I used to have sleepless nights wondering how do I deal with the situation and accept the fact that I might end up being a nobody. The matchmaking process had just started, and somehow I found the idea of flying to a different country with a spouse very obnoxious and unpalatable for me. Many people choose to do it, but the idea of living in an alien country where I would not be permitted to work and where a husband would give me a credit card as a gift was an envisioning of a sad existence for me. Five years later, there is a credit card, but no husband. I still have issues finding a job and the tension of leading the penurious graduate student life. But deep within there is this sense of worthiness that I was fortunate enough to achieve what so many others would long to, to go to graduate school, to contribute in my own minuscule way to the advancement of science. It’s a trade-off, I gave up on the security of a married life, incurred the wrath of my family when I told them to stop deciding my future for me, packed my bags, and landed here, but it’s a tremendous sense of achievement nevertheless. When I talk about achievement, I am not referring to the numerous classes I have taken, the new concepts I have learnt, the grades, my GPA, the contacts with people I made here, and the degree I earned in the process. I am not talking about how I learnt about cultural competency, social capital, and heat shock proteins in class. I am referring to the sense of achievement I feel of having taken a decision for myself and sticking to it, of all the effort I have put up trying to place myself in a new country, new situation, among new people, of all those nights of studying hard and the early mornings spent in lab wishing that my work will be appreciated and I will be accepted as one among them. I feel a sense of achievement for having dared to challenge the fate others had chosen for me, and for proving dad wrong when he said that I wouldn’t survive for more than a month here, not knowing how to cook or take care of myself. I made mistakes, and I learnt from them. I made bad friends, and I made good friends too. I went through my normal share of miseries, and more. I lost hair and put on pounds as a token of being a part of the “stressed American society”. But whenever the going got tough and I thought I could take it no longer, I asked myself to hold on to hope for a little more.

I don’t see a problem with any lifestyle we choose. What’s important is we choose it, taking full responsibility of the consequences. We all make mistakes, and there is no shame in failing. Friends and family are always there for opining and advising. But at the end of the day, I have realized that it makes so much sense to decide things for yourselves and then stick to your decisions.

Today, I have a masters degree from one of the best schools in the US. Here from, I know I can do anything I want to. I can find work, I can get married and still work, or I can go get another degree in something I have wanted to study. And what I take back with me isn’t my degree and my convocation gown and cap and the license plate I’ll have to wait to use it till I learn to drive. What I take back with me is 2 years of rich experience, little successes and failures, lots of memories of going to graduate school, of numerous friends made, and mostly importantly, the realization that I have the power to envision my own life and shape it the way I want to. Like someone told me sarcastically- “You have become an American in every sense. You are all of “individualism” now".

sunshine

In-Class-1.

A few words of advice for those the first time here from personal experiences of (or watching other people) goofing up. Forgive me if you already know these. Just that the subtle changes were so obvious to me.

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Education-

-1. Most of the profs are okay being addressed by their first names. Terrance becomes Terry, Thomas becomes Tom, and David becomes Dave. Imagine calling a 60 year old Prof. Jagnavalkya Sengupta “Jaggu”.

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2. There is no need to ask for permission when you enter a class, even when you are late. They do not ask you to hold your ears and stand facing the black board, even if you enter 10 minutes before the class ends.

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3. It is okay to eat and drink in class. People actually use this time for listening to class as well as having lunch, so that they save up on time. But it is recommended not to eat Indian food in class. The smell is distracting for people not familiar to this cuisine. And every time you are thirsty, there is no need to ask the professor if you can have water. Have water, lemonade, coffee, juice, wine whisky, nobody cares.

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4. It is okay to work on your laptop in class. No teacher would scream- “All students who had laptops hidden in your bag, make a line to the principal’s room”. As long as you do not make noise, nobody cares.

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5. It is okay to sleep in class. No one will ask you sarcastic questions like- “And what were you doing staying awake last night?”

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6. When you give some reason for not being able to complete an assignment on time, people trust you and understand your problem. Never be untruthful or take advantage of this. In fact if you cannot attend a particular class, it always makes sense to email the prof/TA beforehand.

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7. Every email you send is documented, and taken as a final word from you. Never ever write anything that can be used against you and get you in trouble. As a precautionary measure, it makes a lot of sense to save important emails where some kind of confirmation/decision has been reported
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8. Some professors dress formally for class, wearing a tie, while some professors come to class in denims, sports shoes, and anything you’d rather wear at home. As for you, it is okay to wear chappals, shorts, track pants, or whatever you wanna in class (as long as it doesn’t look indecent). As long as you get good grades and do you work on time, no one really cares about what you wear.

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9. Stop bowing to a prof “Good morning sir” every time you meet him in the alley. Just smile and say hi. If asked-“Hi, how are you doing?”, let it suffice to reply in a one word GREAT and smile courteously.

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10. Plagiarism or cheating is a serious offense here. So if you cite someone, give proper references and links. And just because the TA or the prof works on his laptop in the examination hall doesn’t mean you are allowed to turn your head this way and that way, or go to the restroom looking for paper chits. No one, I repeat, no one cheats here. Don’t you ask me the punishment for being caught cheating or plagiarizing stuff. No one would even dare to do such a thing.

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sunshine.

It's Been A Chraizy Week.

So how was the first week of classes? How did it feel to get back to student life after almost a year and a half? How was the transition from an Indian university to an American graduate school?

Truth be told, it’s confusing, and the sheer hard work expected of you was just “chraizy”. As you see, I am slowly picking up bits and pieces of the American accent. Never mind the fact that my facial expressions seem hilarious when I try it out in front of the mirror.

Comparisons do crop up, no matter what. And they said this was just the warm-up week. Well, the warm up was good enough to get my ass on fire. On day 1, we were given handouts for the entire schedule this quarter. Yeah, we run on a quarter basis, which meant a fresh session started every 3 months. I went through my handout to find everything there- the chapters to be taught, the required readings and reference work, additional links, text books, exam schedule, class test and home work schedule, email ids of the professor, every bit of information was there. A careful examination of the schedule confirmed that there would be at least 3 exams, a weekly test, and a couple of homework assignment and readings for each course every week. And I was taking four courses this quarter.

The system is pretty different from the place I came, where there were university exams once a year. This meant that you could sleep and take it easy for the first 11 months, and slog your butt off the last one month. That’s how we were used to, no matter how unscientific it was. And the course combination there was like eating at home. Mom would force you to have every course, starting with the bitter karela and ending with curd/yogurt. Everyone in a particular department throughout the university was studying the same courses, and writing the same exam year after year.

The system here works like a buffet. It was pretty confusing initially, when I was told to pick and choose my courses. Pick and choose? My professors back home would have had a heart attack if I told them that I didn’t take up the biophysics course because I hated physics. Having said that, you just couldn’t randomly pick and choose your courses. It took a lot of careful thinking and foresight to decide what you wanted and what you could leave. Every system has its pros and cons. There, at least you would not have to worry about what courses you took and if you were particularly suited for that. Here, you have to worry. For you don’t really want to spend an entire year taking random courses and realizing at the end that you were perhaps meant to do something different.

Another huge element of surprise was the teaching system here. Classes are held in auditoriums, professors use the mic, every class is video recorded so that if you happened to miss a particular class, you could watch the entire lecture online. The coursework, homework, and everything you needed to know was available online. It might sound pretty naïve of me to find this overwhelming, because I have never seen this before. You remained absent, you got the class notes photocopied, and studied on your own. Simple. I certainly don’t remember the last time I got home assignments in college.

Students went to class in shorts and running shoes. They openly ate and drank in class. They took the class notes on their laptops. They called the professors by the first names. Ask me how uncomfortable it is to call someone grandpa-like by their first name. Ask me how I cringed in embarrassment when the girl next to me kept dangling her legs and showing off thunder thighs, while I was covered almost from head to toe. Nobody cares. As long as you got your assignments done, no one cares.

Home assignments could be typed and printed or simply sent via email. Isn't it amazing? Every out-of-class communication with the professors and the TAs had to be done via email. When you are new to the system, you just can’t help but compare the stark contrasts. Courses here weren’t named, they were numbered. So if someone asked you, “Are you taking the 489 this quarter?”, it would mean he is asking you if you are taking the certain agronomics course that is offered this quarter by a certain Prof. Hogan. And you could easily go up to a 60-something professor and say, “Hi John, I had a quick question about the classes”. There is no concept of good morning sir, excuse me, may I kindly ask you something regarding the classes sir? There are certainly no sirs and madams here.

Perhaps the best part here are the facilities you get, including free printing and scanning and photocopying, library access till late nights, 24 hours of building access, and the library resources. Any graduate student here is allowed a maximum of 2100 books (unless someone makes a request on a particular book), allowed to be kept for the entire quarter. I can’t help but think of my CU days and the way we used to huddle on the two computers in the department, carefully avoiding the irritable woman who used to monitor if we were checking personal emails. And the money we spent on printing and photocopying, I am sure the shop owner would have made enough money to add an entire floor to his home.

The bottom line is- we are entitled to every facility available under the sun. And that includes a handsome graduate assistantship, medical insurance, and other facilities. We wouldn’t really be worrying if the pay check would arrive on time or if it would be possible to find certain reference materials in the library. Worst case if the libraries here don’t have it, they can ship it from any library on this side of the US within a week. You wouldn’t hesitate if you wanted to go to the department post-dinner and study. As long as you had the access codes to the restricted areas right, no one would question, or even notice your presence. You could get as many prints as you needed, and see entire lectures on the web. You needn’t even pay for bus travel provided you paid some $40 at the beginning of every quarter. And in case you were taking the shuttle to the medical college, even that wasn’t necessary. If you didn’t understand particular courses and needed to start afresh, you would always have teaching assistants whose duty was to make sure that you eventually understood things. For as much as they graded your performance, you graded their teaching abilities too. You weren’t expected to worry about anything that would hinder your education and learning here.

The only thing you were expected to do here is study, and study more, and study as much as you could. Laziness and irresponsibility have no excuse. Plagiarism and using unfair means is unacceptable. And underperformers have no place here. If you wanted to hang around in the place, you have to perform. You have to study and do your assignments on time. You have to follow the system. You have to compete with your fellow mates and outperform them. There is no place for mediocrity. You have to be an achiever. You have to run as if your ass was on fire, even if they called it the warm up week.

Having said all this, I better get ready for the assignments tomorrow. Looking forward to yet another “chraizy” week of running.

sunshine.