Finally opened the textbook today. And I have not opened one since college. 'Twas surreal.
Sure I read books all the time. In that sense, currently I
am reading Angel of Death by Higgins. But unless Sean Dillon goes ahead and
discusses SQL query to transpose rows into column without using CASE WHEN, this
book cannot really be called a textbook. Textbooks are basically a big boring
book with a lot of pages, written in dreary language and occasional grammatical
mistakes, every step of everything detailed out in even the tiniest of details.
That does make it sound a lot like 50 Shades doesn't it?
Anyhow. Here I am with an open textbook in front of me
again. The last time I ever opened one was a Mathematics one, filled with
equations and calculus. I hated it. This is one about a SQL primer course. And
I sort of like it. I think it’s because now the book that I've taken up was of
interest to me, and maybe something that I would actually like to learn more
about. Of my choosing.
If you know anything about the education system in India,
you would know this much - the student never has a say in anything.
In any and every education up until Post Grad. The only
choice you can ever take up is - engineering or doctor, biology or computers.
Sure there are a bunch of others Bachelors/Masters studies available out there.
But if you are from the middle class and have shown even an iota of brains
during schooling, you are forced in either of these paths. Nothing else is even
an option for you. Most of us choose engineering, because let’s be honest about
it, medicine is a serious/tedious business. (Couple of years working in IT has
taught me, our lives aren’t all that peachy either.)
Your choices when you do get into engineering are also pretty
limited. You have mostly four - mechanical, computer science, electrical, IT. I
still honestly think the Mech guys are the real engineers; at least they end up
creating something that they can actually hold and say "I made this".
IT/CS, even some ECE guys are just service guys without that sort of ownership
privilege.
I personally know hundreds of folks from my college alone, out
of which I can name just a handful of them who is actually doing something of
worth, related to what we were taught in college. And from them only one is
from CSE/IT. What most of us do now in their day jobs is a long way different
from what we were taught in school. Sure the basic stuff is the same. But the
application is poles apart. It might sound apples and oranges, but I really
think if given a choice/exposure back then. There are a lot of things I could
have kick started doing early in my career.
All that is gibberish I know. I tend to ramble when I am in
the vicinity of technical documentation. Anyone who has attended an engineering
exam knows this. You could ramble on about anything to get that 10-points
answer right.
I remember preparing for exams, one month Prep Leave, one
month of long exams cycle with bunch of gaps between papers. Searching of
textbooks and class notes at the last moment. Put off the actual preparation up
until the last couple weeks and sleep through all the previous ones. Spend
hours just hanging out with friends, playing cards all day. Wake up at
midnight, to drink team and biscuits from Hostel canteen. Damn I feel way too
nostalgic right now.
Today, I think there will be a lot more of that than any
real learning.
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