20/11/2014
REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE
Recently someone created a stir in the otherwise peaceful and stagnant Facebook sphere with his not-so-peace-loving posts and remarks. The intensity of the incident was so high and dramatic that although online, but gave GCECTians a reason to stand united and shout out loud against, well, another GCECTian.
The student , Md. Golam Kibria, who made this come possible is in the CSE stream and got admission last year. He showed a never seen behaviour to reply to his seniors in one such tone that could better be described as rude and filled with dire chutzpah !
The whole issue started with a series of posts by Md. Golam on the forum which initially seemed like a student declaring a war against the education system. In his initial post he questioned in favour of the freedom of a student to choose his/her subjects for the course he/she enrolled for.
His next couple of posts also adressed the same theme. But his last post on 11 th November brought in the chaos.
He, a student in his 2nd year who failed in four subjects in previous year and skipped on one, categorized the students in general.
According to him, there are three types of students. Firstly, those who want to pursue higher studies from renowned institutions. Secondly, those who want a good job from a big company and study just what's needed. And thirdly, those who cheat on exams and on job CVs to get things done. Then he went on to explain how 'dropouts' are more sucessful than those with higher degrees.
This post didn't quite go down well with some forum members and soon the comment box got flooded with comments and replies. Most of them were from the college seniors. But surprisingly, Md. Golam showed no sign to back off but gave some not-so-pleasant replies to them. It angered the seniors and very soon the forum turned into a word for a word battleground.
So what made Md. Golam behave so rudely and harshly ? What gave him almost the status of a rebel ?
"I wanted to start a discussion on the freedom of a student to choose the subjects of his interest and skip on the ones he didn't like" he said.
He also added that he wants to study only the 'Computer Science subjects'. He doesn't think Electronics, Electricals and Mathematics in the 1st semester can be quite counted as 'Computer Science subjects'. And just because he wasn't given the opportunity to choose the subjects he liked, he failed them.
So, did he inform the college about his disliking towards some subjects?
"I didn't. But when they asked me why I'm careless in the classes, I said I'm not interested."
Didn't he know about the syllabus and that all the subjects in 1st year were non-electives ?
"I knew the syllabus even before my admission." Then why did he enrol for a course that has a bound syllabus in first place? He could have gone for some other courses with flexible syllabus structures.
In reply, he referred to a certain WBUT notice which he claimed removes the year-lag system.
But, when we contacted the placement officer of college, P. Guha, he clearly swiped away any such claims. He informed us just about the stream change procedure for which only 10% of the total intake with good marks are eligible. The WBUT notice, Md. Golam had been continuously referring to is not at all applicable.
But, why would he need to look up to a notice to prove his point that he should be allowed to study only the subjects he likes ?
"I was hoping that if the year lag process was absent then I could use it and wouldn't get hurt." So, he was actually looking for a loophole to get away with his failure ?
He said, "My case is different."
Then we asked him why he doesn't want to study those subjects. EE, EC are necessary to understand Digital Electronics and Computer Architecture. And Mathematics is considered as the pilar of Computer Science.
On asking this, he went on to give us a class on Computer Science.
"Digital electronics gate level e hoi, not in atomic level or in transister level." (Digital Electronics is valid at gate level, not at atomic level or at transistor level.") We didn't quite understand what he meant. He didn't stop but went ahead with more never-heard, never-knew-existed knowledge for us.
"If want to make matlab,octabe, then use need first year math, if u need web-application, database,language,apps, you may need automata, discreet math, not our first year math. Gate er sei part ta electronics er student der jonno! Taro niche atomic level as aluminium etc segolo material sc. & engg er jonno!"
We tried our level best to decipher the language he was talking in and came up with the best translation that we could make. It was, "If you want to make matlab, octave projects then you need that part of the maths that are studied in the first year. If you need web based applications or database applications you may need automata, discreet maths, but not those maths. That part of logic gates belong to the students of Electronics! The level beneath it is atomic level made of aluminium etc. Study of those belongs to the students of Material science and Engineering!"
We were stunned by this torrent of new-found knowledge and didn't know what and how to respond.
But the best part of his transcend knowledge came to us as a deep observation. "Science is vast but technology is specific. I think language (JAVA,PHP etc.) Database,Automata, Algorithm,Software, Internet,Artificial Intelligence is the real Comp. Engg."
We were so dumbfounded by the whole conversation that we could not say anything to help him correct his immense misconceptions which were ridiculous to the point of being Computer Scientifically challenged.
We asked him about his broken english though. Almost everybody on the forum ridiculed him for using meaningless english words and sentences for his posts. So, why doesn't he use bengali?
He said, "I heard english is our official language. So I try." That quite wrapped up our interaction with Md. Golam.
So, do the seniors who were bombarded on the forum agree with him ? Protyai Ghosal, a 2014 passout and currently working for Capgemini said, "Everything has a right time. India isn't Silicon Valley. He can't do the things he wants to do here."
But not everyone was so generous. Some were so irritated with this whole issue that they almost wanted to give him a piece of their minds.
Nachiketa Ray, an IISc alumnus and currently pursuing his research work in Belgium was also a victim of the loose canon that day. When we asked him if he thinks Md. Golam was posting these kind of things just to draw attention, he said, "Yes. I think he is trying to draw attention and he is arrogant. Again he is very frustrated because he failed and received dubious letters from WBUT."
At the same time he suggested all the students to settle this issue privately in a peaceful manner. And to Md. Golam, his friendly suggestion was to trust his collegemates and the college authority to solve his problem.
Ayan Deb, also a current year passout and working for Capgemini blaimed Md. Golam for all the chaos and was pretty cut-throat about it. "If someone shouts out loud just to cover up his failures, then I think he has psycological issues!" he said.
But the concluding remarks came from Srimoyee Bhattacharya. Batchmate of Ayan Deb and the topper of her final semester who is currently working for the same MNC as Ayan, wanted all to ignore such incidents.
Then she added "You know, after a hard day of work at office, this guy (Md. Golam) gave me my piece of entertainment." She agreed to the fact that he is one such guy who seems to have lost his facts.
But then she sounded optimistic. "I pray to god he may regain his senses!"
We all pray too. Fingers crossed.