Tag / Missing the summer internship

by Second Iris

Day 140: 2017 Highs – Bhored

It’s 2018. 2017 has gone by, and the cyberspace is overflowing with messages of positivism in the upcoming year, reviews of the year that went by and promises for the new year. Here’s my year in review but focused on the major highs and the lows.

Bhor-ed

The summer spent in a little town, south of Pune, definitely tops the list of highlights for the year.

The internship started at the end of Year 1 in the new career, at a point when the University and the teachers had left a strong sense of doubt in my mind. While the subjects were novel and insightful, a welcome change from the days of Engineering, the methods of teaching, the mindset of the teachers, and the management, in general, where a hard reality-check of an industry overflowing with archaic ideologies and bureaucracy. I was left questioning their ancient ways, and the effect that they were having on the minds of the next generation. The pain compounded when the realization sunk in that this was a department training teachers, tasked with equipping the citizen for tomorrow.

It was with that broken morale that I joined the group of educationists in Bhor, and the group saved me from the dark dungeons of my own mind. I realized that while I was stuck in a place that was still shuffling in the industrial era of education, there were agencies out there that had moved on to the modern ages. The group made me realize that all it takes is a few like-minded souls to get together in order to bring a change in any area that one is passionate about. The gang reinstated in my mind the belief that all one needs in life is hope to keep surviving. The team also reaffirmed the idea in my head that it was very easy to join a certain school of thought, make its registers our own, but that it took an open mind to walk the middle path and understand both points of view.

  • The whole experience reinstated my respect for simplified living. One does not really need three different sizes of coffee pots or five dupattas in varying shades of the same black. The clarity that comes with losing clutter is very powerful and the month at Bhor helped me realize that.
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Some chai and samosas at the school

  • The weekly Tuesday markets were absolute fun. We were the outsiders that got stared at every time we went out of the house. And yet, I did not feel the awkwardness that typically comes with walking out in public in the cities.
  • The sunrise and the sunset were absolutely out of this world. We did not have to drive 100 kms away from the city, hike up 2 hours and fight off a crowd for the best views. I looked out the window at day break and there it was, the beaming ball of fire. Equally easy was the sunset. And the million stars that popped out when you looked up at the night sky are hard to come by even 100 kms away from the city.
  • The planning that goes into running a household is beyond compare. From picking up groceries on a Tuesday for the whole week ahead, to planning dinner-breakfast-lunch for the next day, everything was done systematically. This completely removed the last minute frantic run that one normally does before a meal. This experience helped me tremendously in planning for Keto. Yay!
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And, we made amazing an Chocolate Cake!

  • Fooood! The mallu mango curry, the great chicken curry, the super-thick lassi/malai, the chocolate cake, the banana bread, the yellow pumpkin pooris, the overly simple yet tasty sabudana poha. There was just too much of too yummy food to keep us going.
  • At the end of the day, the highlight of the whole trip was the quality of the conversations. Whether we were arguing about something or agreeing to the same perspective, whether we were discussing the men in our lives, there was a high level of involvement and zeal in the conversation and immense respect for the parties in the discussion.

 

They were very different people, with varied interests and life experiences. They were very successful in their lives; Doctorates, educationists and designers. Some walked the straight-out leftist path, while others trod a little left of center. Some wanted technology to play a larger role in education while others didn’t care too much. Nonetheless, they loved talking education, especially with each other; they loved goofing around while getting serious work done; they had an open mind to try varied things, and were learners for life.

Here’s to more such great company in the years to come!

dav

by Second Iris

Day 8: Of disappointments galore

The day, Monday, turned out to be a major overflow of disappointments.

Aussies

We have a team of teacher trainees from two universities in Australia visiting us for three weeks, and pairing up with our teachers for team teaching at their internship schools. A welcome session was arranged and it kicked off the day full of disappointing acts.

With some foresight, the head of the department had booked rooms for this event four months ago. Little did he know that the new batch of students would total 8. Even less likely in his mind was an MA admission of 14 students. This left the department short of about 45 seats at the reserved venue. And how did the gentleman solve this dilemma?

With utter callousness and randomness. He randomly let the first 25 students in each of the B. Ed classes in and asked the teachers to pick 5 MA students randomly out of the 14. That shows the worth that he holds to both the session and the students.

What caught my nerve more was the complete lack of voice amongst the other teachers. Agreed that it is a pitiful situation to have such a leader. But I believe it’s more pitiful to sit tight and do nothing.

For all the ill will that the random selection process churned in my head, the welcome session turned out to be a bummer. It seemed like a dinner date between the Aussies and the leadership team, where a few 50 third-wheels were invited in to watch how the dinner unfolded.

Awkward!

Lunch with the juniors

The day of upsets continued with the lunch session with the juniors. While they all generally showed a keen interest in the field and knew what they wanted at the end of the degree, it seemed to prick none of them that they were sitting along with the B. ED class, a bunch that is historically known to be at a much lower learning acumen.

Again the pitiful state where nobody likes status quo, but nobody wants to question it either.

Worse still, they have been split up in all the upcoming events because one loud mouthed MA would rather mingle with the B. Eds than these folks. And the lot let her bully them into her decision too. She had the nerve to not even show up for our lunch meet.

It’s funny how this bully loner spoke to me extensively about having been a student rep in her previous institution and her being very keen in joining the student council here. How likely is she to lead a team of 20000 students, when she can’t successfully work with 13 others?

Internship presentation

The deal of disheartenment was sealed by my final intern presentation. It was attended by four people, two out of which slept through the whole session and the other two had clearly zoned out. For all the effort that I put in over the summer and into this presentation, the session seemed extremely underwhelming.

Today, I feel extremely dispirited for having picked this college to pursue this course. I wouldn’t blame the year when I joined, with two other disinterested folks, because I look at the current batch and realize I wouldn’t have been pleased there for sure. At least with a class of three, we are still the Masters program, and we can direct the level and flow of our classes. In their batch, I would have had to do most of my studying myself. In which case, why bother joining a full time program to begin with!

I am reminded of the company over the summer, and the quality of conversations we had during casual chats and dinners. There was an abundance of gossip about Bollywood and the insensitivity of men in modern relationships. But there was an equal melee of productive conversation about education, about moving the system forward, about questioning the system that doesn’t work, and about making our voices heard.

Did I do a mistake my not joining TISS? Should I have waited a year and joined TISS, simply for the network and the quality of conversations it would have given me? After all, learning is beyond the four walls of the classroom and the two end pages of a book. Right?

“Us dogs have a policy, S. When we see any situation, if we can’t eat it or play with it, we just pee on it and walk away. How about that?” Scotch 

Either that, or you could sleep like a worm. It helps!