For me, sitting in a B.Tech class room was like a dream come true, I was
never sure I would be intellectually and  financially able to sit in an
engineering institution. Now, I have officially finished my 6 months
industrial training and completed my B.Tech with honors but deep with in me,
I know that neither my training nor my degree is complete yet. My main
project for training “LibreHatti” is yet nowhere near completion and there
are plenty of subjects such as Mathematics, MALP, DAA, FLAT etc, that I need
more expertise in. All my friends have shared joyous statuses on facebook
and tweets on twitter claiming themselves worth of the prefix Er. but I
remember a promise I made in GD mailing list once, I told that I shall call
myself engineer only when I know each concept of M3, MALP , SP and every
subject that I should know and I am not good enough in. I haven’t yet
achieved that so, no Er. for now.

I wonder and I feel pity on the education system. How easy it is to get
passing marks or even top the university and complete the degree without
knowing anything about subjects and concepts involved. I go to give seminars
to B.Technicians only to find blank faces and emptiness inside their eyes.
They may smile, laugh and giggle. They may even get jobs in big MNCs or have
their own startups but they still have that emptiness in their eyes. Nothing
else would ever be able to fill that vacant space,deserved by knowledge and
wisdom. The true confidence, the true sense of achievement and satisfaction
comes only when you know that you know, when you have fulfilled your duty to
learn, to understand and to practice the concepts that you should know as an
engineer. If you pass the subject or even get the best marks but still you
don’t know it well, there’s a guilt inside. You can ignore it, deny it, give
excuses and examples to console yourself but nothing would change that guilt
other than working towards making your basics strong.  This feeling of not
having done the things that you should have is similar to the feeling of
having missed a ‘Nitnem’ or ‘Meditation’. My baptized Sikh friends can
relate to it. There’s something missing, something wrong with everything
until you have done it. Same is the case of B.Tech, if there’s a subject
that you should know well but you don’t , it will keep hitting you in your
head until you do it. It’s true for me at-least.

I look at marks, I look at people fighting, crying and sobbing for marks,
for certificates. Marks would have been great and frankly it feels great to
be called a topper but I would have loved marks if they showed real caliber
but they don’t. Your github profile, your portfolio is all that matters at
the end. Even if you care for marks (as they act as gateways into many
organisations and higher studies) nothing would ever be able to replace the
importance of knowledge and wisdom.If I evaluate myself I would have failed
mathematics 5 6 times by now, I would have never passed MALP and would have
got much lesser marks in OS, but here I stand as one of the bright students
of my class in the world that perceives me,  associates me with some stupid
2 digit number. For me such marks are nothing more than a joke. I beg, I
plead don’t let education system make a joke out of you, to give you 80% or
90% without giving you skills and knowledge worth that number. To get a
degree without being an engineer is the worst thing that can happen to you,
don’t let that happen. Fault doesn’t lie with the college or teachers or
anyone. It’s just with the whole system through out the world and I am not
the only one who realize it. The education system has been stuck in it’s
origins for centuries without any motivation for innovation and change.  No
doubt! we have lot of drop-out success stories. No doubt, we hear quotes
like “Don’t let college interfere in your education” and so on.

I will be having a convocation in coming months, but there’s a long way yet
to be an engineer. Will use that prefix Er. for sure but not before I am a
Computer Science Engineer.