Archis's Blog

Pretty harsh words – yes, I know. I was just wondering, is it just me or has everyone at one point or another actually felt ashamed of their college?

Let me try and clarify the definition (as I always do) and distinctly separate it from feeling sad about your college’s condition, or feeling angry at them or feeling dissatisfied about them. When I say ashamed, I mean truly feeling that you wouldn’t want others to judge you by what happens there?

Now let’s get one thing straight – I’ve seen the worst in life, and I’m living the best in life. I studied in a rural school as a child. A school which today, eight years after I left, has 3 PCs with 486 processors in them running DOS 6.22 on 4 MBs of RAM. I remember my “computer education” in school consisting of writing programs on gw-basic. I’ve been laughed at amongst peers who hailed from some pretty fancy-sounding schools whose notions of good schooling consisted of using the words “bloody”, “dude”, and “cool” in wierd non-Indian accents (which certainly didn’t sound anything like either American or British).

And yet, I’ve always been very proud of my schooling. I made good friends there, and learnt a lot (really learnt). Given a second chance, I wouldn’t go to any of the reputed schools and give up the amazing friends I made in my school. I’ve definately felt sad at the school’s condition. I’ve sometimes been angry at their policies. And I definately feel dissatisfied at the the lapse of quality in many cases. But I’ve never been ashamed. This is exhibited in the fact that I’ve never ever blindly defended the school where I felt it deserved criticism. I would never be a part of a signature-campaign to protect a teacher if ever a complaint was made by a student (I’d more likely go talk to the student and figure out why they complained in the first place).

After some soul-searching, I began to nail down exactly what the difference between my school and post-school education has been.

The biggest difference I noticed was the willingness for improvement. My school never was much, and it still isn’t much. But it has certainly improved in the last eight years since I passed out. They struggle to improve. The pride I feel is in the fact that they’re way ahead of where they were last year, and the year before that. Institutions that I studied in later have had big names and high reputations, but they’ve never really wanted to improve. They never wanted to be part of the competition. They’ve all exhibited a sour-grapes syndrome where they convince themselves that the world doesn’t understand their grandeur and hence they choose to ignore the world.

I just wanted to know – from you other “big college” people, if you’re willing to let your ego down for a minute and comment honestly – have you ever felt ashamed of your colleges?