I get a day off from college to do project work. I’m supposed to come up with an idea I’m interested in and then work on implementing that idea. Nice! Really. Of the 8 semesters that I’m expected to be in college I was hoping that this semester would be the most interesting.
Interesting ideas are not hard to come by. I can’t say the same about reasonable professors. I don’t mind if my ideas are shot down because they aren’t feasible or are completely insane but rejecting it because some senior did something similar last year or because it’s mostly a simulation or because it’s a term they’ve heard of and hence its not cutting edge enough? Seriously, WTF?!
The best recommendation they could give me was to go to a project centre. After spending a month trying to convince them that I could do a project on my own and failing miserably, I finally go to a project centre. These people hand you a booklet with projects that are nicely categorised under headings like IEEE, Embedded Systems, Networking, Communication, VLSI. How nice? Like vegetables arranged in your neighbourhood grocery they’ve got everything all nicely arranged for your picking. You listen to their rehearsed, almost retarded explanation of the project, pick a project that sucks the least and pay up. Ask them what you’re expected to do and their answer is (translating quote from Tamil to English) “cash apart, you’re expected to attend classes and not mess with the kit once it’s handed to you (smile)”. And to think the project costs 20,000 bucks. They’re fleecing us and I can’t do a damn thing about it. The only consolation is that I’m assured of my project being accepted and a ‘guarantee’ that it’ll work.
Anna University finally lets us do something creative and my college goes and screws it all up. Another sem wasted. I’m not sure what I feel right now. I’ve run out semesters to make my college education worthwhile but that would also mean I’m done with this whole load of crap. Oh well, one less day of college per week. I guess I should be glad.
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Ouch, that sucks, and my god! That’s a lot of money! More than my entire course fee I think.
Now that you put it that way, I feel even worse.
My pleasure. What are you working on anyway?
The same is happening with me and my friends. Its horrible. The only semester where we can try to do something useful and creative but we are once again denied that. All thanks to the great staff we have.
good luck for the project.
@ George: I’m not really working on anything. I’ve bought a prefabricated project that does to buses what a train terminal (the electronic terminal, not the train station type terminal) does to trains.
@ Vinod: I see this isn’t an isolated incident. I just can’t get why they insist on a project centre. They let us fend for ourselves during the practicals so why not now?
@ sindhu: Thanks. I probably need more money than luck though. More money, bigger project, more stuff to stun the crap out of the external examiner.
Well I guess they just think that we are not capable of doing things on our own or we may mess up things at the end and that will bring down the image of the staff in front of the external.
Oh shit man, that sucks pretty hard, you having to go get a project that’s already done. It’s forcing you to effectively ‘cheat’. They might as well not have that project thing at all.
You have only one day off?Meaning you get 4 working days..?That’s terrible!!
Well, I’ve got four half days if that’s any consolation.
My college wants innovative ideas and ask us to do a project for minimum of 15,000! Well but for my department they want us to complete the project by Feb first week and I haven’t even started. My dept also has an option that I could do the project in some University in the US.
et tu blogi? great great
@ Adithya: Innovative eh? At least one college out there is trying to do the right thing. The deadline is kinda tight but hey, if you can do your own stuff then I guess the deadline is just a minor detail.
@Kaushikram: I don’t quite call myself a blogger but for lack of a better categorisation I’ll call this place a blog. From what I remember you used to be in to this almost full time.
You are allowed to approach any project center, right? But our HOD sold us to some unknown center for a hefty commission. We are forced to ‘cheat’, as George puts it, but with no apparent choice of a center.
WTF?! And I thought it couldn’t get any worse.