The world in general believes that more
often than not, half knowledge is far worse than no knowledge. Half knowledge
without knowing how to use it is as good as knowing nothing and even if you do
put it to use how bad can it get? I mean logically one does realize that one
does not achieve his aim with no knowledge. But half knowledge? I mean you did
spend some time, learning it didn't you? Can it really be harmful? Well, it
isn't. At least not in my world…..
My subjects involve a lot of work and more
often than not, it is not completely possible to give them the attention they
demand. The semester pattern is designed such that you have enough time but not
too much. An engineer can notify himself on the good looking girls in his batch.
He can even run about trying to find out their name, or write a program for the
color of dress she will wear the next day(believe me people have done it!) ,but
to sit for long hours and chit chat with them would cost him, not money, but
marks. Yes friends before one can find out whether the girl is single or not
the semester exams will arrive and hell will break loose, and after that we
don’t get to see those beautiful faces anymore. The thrill of taking two months
to find out their name or writing a C program on them is now a distant memory.
We go home and stare at the same faces we have been seeing since the day we
were born. Yes parents, and yes you do get to see the variety in their facial
expressions from the time of receiving you in the railway station to seeing
your results, you get to see all the expressions you missed for six months so
much that, you don’t miss them anymore.
What happens when we come back? That’s the
interesting thing about college; you get new subjects and new faces every semester.
In fact in the beginning you find it hard to pick your entertainment, so hard
that you forget which one of them you were patronizing last semester. So as I
was saying, my subjects do demand effort and attention, a great deal of both,
and often we devote neither time nor effort. But we do study something; I mean
everybody does want to score after all, you don’t want too much variety in the
facial expressions part when you get home, do you? So we all put in our efforts and study. Now
surely you cannot remember everything when going for an exam. That’s when the
real talent of an engineer is seen. Convert what you know to what they want, without
getting it wrong. This is obviously a challenge, but once you get a hold of it,
it’s your best arsenal in college life
I present before you three cases from my
own life
Case 1-
Workshop Exam
The workshop is basically where they make
you do things you will seldom do in the rest of your engineering life-carpentry,
plumbing, fitting and soldering. Each of them I hate doing for a different
reason
Fitting-takes too much effort, almost makes
me feel like I have donated all the blood in my body just to cut some piece of
metal
Plumbing-worse than fitting, takes so much
effort that two people have to do it
Carpentry-you cut, cut, and oops you’ve cut
the wrong part. Do the whole thing again
Soldering-I don’t particularly hate it, but
then again I don’t like it too much either
So the semester somehow passed, with me
completing all the above four tasks. Finally the workshop pre-finals came and I
got carpentry as my experiment. I looked at the rather shabby piece of wood. I
remember reading in the procedure that I had to cut it along some particular
line in order to make a joint. Simple enough I had to cut it along some line.
But problem was that there were three lines and I dint know which one to cut. I
looked at the examiner; he was checking the wood samples of the previous batch.
I stared at the wood hard, visualizing what I had to create . I then started to
work on it. In half an hour I was done. Then came my viva, he showed me some
tool that looked like a wooden hammer and asked me “What is this tool?”. “A
wooden hammer sir”, I replied. He made a frown. I suddenly found my wood more
interesting and decided to look away. Apparently the wooden hammer in carpentry
was called a mallet. I lost my marks.
Case 2-
Computer Programming
Next practical was computer programming. This
time too I studied very little, but decided to take it more optimistically. Viva
came again with my question being, ”What is a structure?”.
As usual I dint know what it was, but I
decided to answer it anyway. I told the examiner all about Union and how it was
related to ‘Structure ‘ (with good
vocabulary in the middle) which made her all the more confused. But hey, I got
the marks! I didn’t know that chapter and yet I pulled off a good viva.
Case
3- Workshop Final
Again the same workshop, same carpentry. But
this time I knew which line to cut from the beginning (thanks to the pre-final),and
again came the viva.this time I did however read a little about tools and went.
The same examiner asked me, “What is this?” pointing at the same wooden hammer.
Oh no! I went blank. I was suffering from a case 2 engineering exam disorder, I
read it, but forgot! The examiner smiled, I smiled back. This time I decided
that I was going to give it a try anyway. I remembered faintly the functions of
the tool and started enlisting them. The examiner was pleased. If he asked for
alphabet A I was giving him alphabets B to Z, for free. Finally the question
boiled down to the same thing “So what is it called?“ he asked. I said “sir ma
ma ma …”. “Mallet “, he completed. Yes sir i said. “ Stupid name sir, not able
to pronounce it” I said.
Seriously not able to pronounce it?
Who cares anyway, he bought it. I got full
in my viva.
Here is my take home message to everyone
here, “If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance,
baffle them with bull shit”.
But never give up. Who said that? Not
anyone famous (yet). It’s just me.
I know that what happened with me was the
mere aesthetics of an instant, that instant. But nevertheless there is no harm
in trying.
“Whatever
you can do, begin it, boldness has a genius, power and magic in it”-Goethe
Few days ago I was doing the usual what
every student does on a holiday. I was browsing on Facebook with a friend of mine.
I came across a post that read “if half knowledge is dangerous then engineers
are nuclear weapons”. My friend, a medical student looked and asked, ”Are you
offended?. “No”, I replied. “I’m just amused!”.
