Category: 2019

I think it’s important to tell people when you think they’ve done a good job. It can make a really big difference to them. Or maybe it won’t matter at all. But, if there’s a possibility that you are likely to make them feel even the slightest bit better about the work they’ve done by telling them you thought it was good work – you definitely should.

And maybe not just a “good work”, but with something more nuanced. Tell them what you liked about their work in particular, and what stood out.

Maybe we need to start doing this more. Not just with work, but in general. Appreciate people and say positive things about them.

I say this fully knowing that I share an insult-based friendship with several friends of mine, including the latest subscriber to this blog.

I’ve begun an internship at IIM-Ahmedabad. I’m not sure if I’ve written about this on the blog before but I found this Professor here who takes interns on board to help with research and I thought it was a great opportunity for me to do a couple of things. Aside from the work experience I thought it would give me a good amount of time to get away from my campus and relax a little, and also give me access to resources of arguably one of the finest institutions in our country.

IIM-A is revered here. Across industries, in pop culture, WIMWI (and I’m not sure if outsiders like myself are allowed to use the term) is an institute that has captured the imagination of several in the country. Of course, admission is based on a test and an interview process. And of course, the test does demand an aptitude of Mathematics. But the entire procedure that IIM’s use to select the crop of students who get to spend two years here has been the subject of several enjoyable Quora threads and a lot of conversations. It’s probably one of the testing systems that receives the least amount of flack in India for the pressure that it puts on students. Whether that’s down to the fact that individuals who write the entrance to get into IIM-A are more mature than those writing the CET or the JEE, or the CLAT or several other abbreviated test papers, or down to the fact that there appears to be an element that accounts for an individual’s opportunity to express and be themselves, I’m not sure.

Whatever it is, the institution seems to produce leaders. Okay, forget leaders – because I think that’s too much pressure to place on individuals who graduate from an institution. The institution and it’s experience creates individuals who have perspective to offer to most conversations.

My experience of IIM-A alums is limited to two individuals I’ve had the luck to spend a fair amount of time with. My mom’s colleague and his wife saw me grow up from being a baby child in Grade 6, and I visit them even now when I’m in the same city as them. Of course, conversation was easier because of how many of our interests overlap, but the one thing I’ve always admired about them is how much and how widely they read, and how much of a different perspective they’re able to provide to everything I’m experiencing. I really enjoy that.

Anyway, I’ve been observing that up-close, now that I get to sit in the library here twice a week, and I think the institution itself facilitates a lot of that. Even my conversations with the professor supervising me feel different to the conversations I have with professors on campus – something I think is reflective of the culture of an institute.

It’s different – and I’m enjoying the difference.

Yesterday on the way back to campus my Uber driver was an individual who drove Ubers part-time – who was saving up for his daughter to go to Law school. When he saw my campus gate he commented “Yahaan nahi aane wali hai”, which translates to “She isn’t going to come here”. Defensively, I asked, “Toh kahaan?”, loosely meaning “So, where else?”, and he confidently said “Bangalore mein seat pakka milega”.

That belief in his daughter’s ability moved me. I know my parents have that belief in me as well, and I know how much of a difference it makes on days that I feel less motivated to do things, or to go to class, or even to put in less effort to activities I do perform.

I just hope it doesn’t overburden her with pressure. Pressure can obfuscate the difference between someone else’s expectations of you, and your own expectations of yourself – which I think is unfair when you’re trying to decide on your own career path and how you want to spend up to 5 years of your life.

 

Going back into classes after an entire week of exams is very disillusioning. The week spoilt me. I was able to sleep in the middle of the day, and choose when I wanted to concentrate and when I wanted to turn off. The dress code was relaxed because I knew nobody would care about me turning up in pyjamas to the exam hall. (To be honest, I don’t care about wearing pyjamas to class now either, but I wear jeans or pants to show some respect for the educational institution, or something – there’s no real reasoning behind it)

Especially those two holidays we had in the middle. Because I slept and didn’t keep any alarms, knowing that I wouldn’t miss an exam even if I slept in. My general exam sleep cycle means I don’t keep alarms at all – relying instead on an extended network of friends to wake me up on time. But this laziness appears to have carried forward to the week itself, because I haven’t kept my alarms, and found myself awake only because the sun hit my eyes and blinded me as soon as I opened them.

In any case, the weather in Ahmedabad/Gandhinagar (I’m still unsure what to call this) seems to have stabilized enough (by which I mean it is now warm/hot) for me to have a bath every morning, instead of picking whether to bathe in the afternoon based on the fluctuating weather and my mood. Having a bath in the morning is amazing, because it actually wakes you up. Like, physically. The bucket bath is also excellent exercise, and you’ll hear your knees crack at various points. Exciting.

Today also allowed me to go outside for dinner with my friends – something we used to do regularly in the first few semesters, but manage maybe only once or twice a semester now. It’s these trips that remind me how lucky I am to be in college, because I’m surrounded by people I like hanging out with, and people who are kind souls, people I’m hoping to be in touch with forever. It also allows us to explore the extents of our appetites and their capabilities. 5 of us, for example, consumed 10 Mango Lassis last night, spending an upward of 1000 rupees on these drinks.

What a joy we are.

 Today’s been a very, very peaceful day. And I’ve enjoyed it – which leads me to two realizations. One, I need more of these. Two, I’m likely to need to create more of these for myself.

I woke up late, headed to IIM-A for internship work, came back, got laundry done, binge-watched a Netflix Formula One docuseries, which was fantastic.

And then saw Manchester United lose to Arsenal.

God really knows how to give me good days in moderation. As one friend put it, “happiness and sadness are after all two sides of the same coin”, which sounds cooler in Hindi because “sikke ke moh” is an amazing expression that is criminally underutilized.

In other news, I fell behind, but have quickly caught up to this blog – something I’m pleased with. Something I’m not looking forward to is having to attend class this week. They relocated us back to 3.8, the classroom that is the furthest possible location from the mess – which means it’s going to take forever to get to lunch, and the entire lunch line would have formed by then.

Despicable.

Atleast we’re back in the cute amphitheatre-setting classrooms.

 

I really like my juniors.

Yes, some of them irritate me at several points during the year. But, the ones I interact with, and interact with for the first time, I really enjoy talking to. Everyone’s so diverse, and has a unique perspective on things. Everyone has something to share. More interestingly, something ticked off in each of those brains that made law school seem like a decent enough idea. Even if they begin to reconsider it, it’s worth understanding how many different things can go off to spark that one conclusion: whether it’s by elimination, sheer luck, or a careful examination of options, people end up here.

That’s something I love hearing about.

Especially when they’re drunk and explaining their moot arguments to me, what a joy that is.

 

Last exam, thank God.

I will now present multiple arguments about why mid-semesters ought to be scrapped at my University:

1. They take one week of teaching time away, therefore reducing course that can possibly be covered by faculty during that time period. Arguably, 4 classes is not much, but it can see, some critical concepts explained in a skeleton manner. An example of this is the Specific Relief Act, which can be taught instead of being left out of course material for a particular batch.
2. This extra week will also reduce burden on faculty to take extra classes in order to hit the minimum lecture requirement that is demanded of them. It also means that faculty will not schedule these extra classes one week before the examinations: teaching critical content, and reducing independent study and extra-curricular time, which is crucial to both students’ happiness, and students’ examination performance during end-term examinations.
3. The learning outcome that arises out of mid-semesters for students – which is that you are able to understand faculty demands better, or are able to study half your course, is not one that is actually accomplished. In practice, what occurs is that several students do not consult with faculty to understand demands better, nor do faculty discuss the mid-semester paper in class. Moreover, the learning of half the course material is irrelevant because several faculty do not cut the pre mid-semester portion out of the end-semester portion, meaning that although significant time is not spent on learning it for the end-semester, time is spent on it nonetheless.
4. Having papers one after the other, without any break, whatsoever, is cumbersome to students themselves and does not aid their learning in any manner whatsoever. Several students cram the material and forget it instantly after the exam finishes which should not be the goal of testing.
5. Testing, on principle, must allow for improvement. A mid-semester exam does not account or allow for any improvement because it does not provide the opportunity to write a special exam in case of poor performance. This is onerous to students who need to write end-semesters with a very high minimal pass grade. By this, I mean that a student who scores a 7/30 in the mid-semester, and a 5/10 in the end-semester, needs to score a 38/50 to merely pass the course – a burden that is far too high to place on students on one exam. If not scrapping the mid-semester, it’s perhaps arguable that results need to be declared earlier.
6. No. This is my final argument. Nobody needs to go through this at all.

From a very meh paper to a paper I enjoyed preparing for and writing. How emotions and the thought of pleasant faculty can affect one’s preparation is immense. Our Competition Law faculty is exuberant, energetic, and passionate. He also goes off on tangents at numerous points during a discourse. But, if you choose to pay attention in his classes, you will leave them a little better informed, but certainly, more entertained. I think that sticks through as you prepare, and it allows you to focus on content because you know it’s correct and has logic to it – since he’s explained it that way.

I’m also ridiculously sleepy – not because of anything but my own actions and choices. Studying the night before an exam is an adventure I would not recommend to the weak-willed and the faint of heart, because sleep is a powerful intoxicant that demands your entire attention.

Especially when you choose to sit on your bed.

I can’t believe it’s taken my 4 years to figure that out.

Is it possible to have a good paper followed by a bad paper? Yes. Such is life. Exams are such. Each exam must taken independently, and not as an entire set of papers. Which necessarily demands that you take each paper without thinking about papers in the past, and papers of the future. This is particularly difficult when exams all happen in one stretch, a singular week demanding all your focus, your energy, and your concentration. Of course, there’s a hype about – exams here are often straightforward, demand very little application of the mind, and are usually glorious writing-fests, but, the fact that you attempt to prepare to the best of your capability is not an aspect of exam-taking that you can overlook.

This is difficult also when papers vary in difficulty – either owing to course material, course subject, or even inherent interest.

I like Taxation far less than I like other Laws. Conceptually, however, Taxation is something I’m for. Which is not a system I’m comfortable with. This dichotomy in preference clearly showcased itself to it’s fullest when I wrote my Tax Law paper. Onto the next one.

I had a good paper today. Aside from legitimately having a lot of content to write for all answers, I had a good paper because I thought the paper was well-set, and that made a massive difference to my mentality as I wrote. This was one of the first papers in Law school that tested us on everything that was included in the portion for the exam – which meant skipping modules and not preparing properly would have affected your confidence in writing answers for sure. It was well-balanced, with questions across all modules, options, and options designed to test your test-taking ability by testing your time-management decision-making, which I think is an attribute not a lot of faculty account for – they either set papers that are excessively lengthy, or uselessly short that we spend time faffing around about.

Which brings me to my qualm about exams generally. Even today, on a paper I enjoyed writing so much, I found myself counting pages that I had to the end of the manuscript. I knew I had 18 sides to fill up with my content, and 5 6 markers to attempt, so no real split was possible, especially since each answer was to start on a fresh page for readability. But by the end I noticed I had 7 sides for 2 answers and kept counting to make sure I had enough content to get to the end. Which means I’ve become a slave to the system here. I don’t know if it reflects poorly on me, but this is a culture I wanted to stay away from in first year, and yet, I’ve succumbed to it. One day I’m hopeful that this attitude leaves me. The sooner the better.

In either case, this is who I am now, so I must embrace atleast the fact that I don’t think I faffed on even one of those eighteen sides I have written today. Which is noteworthy.

Last night was exciting too. I saw a cat in the boys hostel washroom around 1AM. The electricity was cut off at 2AM for about an hour, which meant utter chaos because people were screaming things collectively and letting out all their frustration by shouting into the abyss and nothing could regulate us. I don’t know how the energy sustained one hour but the josh in the boys hostel at losing our source of power, was frightening. If you channeled the screaming for electricity, and converted sound energy to electrical energy somehow, you’d have a self-powered machine in the boys hostel. Man.

Too much yelling.

Law school can sometimes push you to these places, I think.

Tomorrow’s a rough paper – because the course is poorly structured and horribly explained. I’ve just completed the portions but I understand very little of it at the moment so it’s going to be a long night of trying to understand bits of what I’m going to go tomorrow and write eighteen sides for.

One of my friends told me we’ve written 87 papers here already. All midsems and endsems included. That’s an accurate number and it’s horrifying. I don’t think I wrote 87 exams between 10th to 12th Grade.

If you haven’t read Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, or about women in our epics, it’s a premise worth reading about. It’s worth pondering. It’s worth considering, and worth questioning. The answers aren’t convenient at all, but if anything, they’ll get you to question how deep-rooted some notions are within our society.

I first read Palace of Illusions when I came to University, and then read Forest of Enchantments today, which I think is a phenomenal piece of writing because it imparts emotion to a person whom society reveres for hiding her emotion throughout an epic.

I’ll post a full book review only once my exams get over.

However, I think our epics are also worth some of my time. In 2016 August, I purchased a translation of the Mahabharata, that Penguin was publishing, with an ambition to read all the volumes as translated and really get into them. I didn’t make it past book one. Now’s probably as good a time as any to get back into reading ancient Indian literature. I’m fortunate because my family is full of sources who can read Sanskrit and have read the texts and various commentaries to offer interpretative guidance and answer some difficult questions about human existence. It’s probably also time to consult them.

If you aren’t a reader, watch this:

Ignore your feelings about Zee, no matter what they are – because while I understand them, you’ll miss out on a masterclass in Historical Fiction.

I have successfully wasted one day during exam-time – a day I thought I’d spend studying and finishing as much portion as I could for an exam that I’m genuinely dreading. However, the day has ended, and my accomplishment of portion stands at a meagre 33%. As times like these pass, I think about my 10th Grade productivity and feel bad at times. I liked all my subjects back then, and honestly, you could give me three months to sit at home and study, and I’d study every single day. The lack of motivation hits hard before papers I don’t like studying for these days, and that’s not really something I associate with myself.

But it’s happened too many times over the course of Law school. I’m grateful that I’ve always found something in the subject to motivate me to study, but it gets tough at times.

Things I did today, however, include a lot of nice reading. And creating my first legitimate Spotify playlist.

Another paper down. Thankfully so, because now we’ve got a break of two days before the other four hit us in succession. This means I can watch YouTube for half a day or more, depending on my motivation, before I start studying. In reality though, I’ll sleep through the entire day and begin studying only at night, which is precisely what happened today after the exam. I woke up being supremely disoriented and confused about how much time had elapsed, and wondered how seasons had changed (the only explanation for this is Gujarat weather, and nothing else).

Today’s paper was alright. The preparation for it was really irritating though, because at various points while studying, I found myself questioning the necessity of studying the subject, it’s purpose and relevance to my daily life, and whether I was understanding anything that I was mugging up. Only one answer was positive, and thankfully, for now, it was the last one. I did, however, grow frustrated with the number of case laws we had, and ended up at one point during the night, taking a frustration nap.

This bothers me because I feel like I’m doing two things wrong. One, I feel like I’ve stopped enjoying my studies – something I really dislike, because I love how much I like learning new things. But, two, and what I find more problematic, is that I feel like I’m betraying why I came to law school. I think it’s fine for me to dislike subjects – I’m entitled to a subject preference. However, questioning a Law’s relevance to my life feels really strange because I now think that I’m being unappreciative of a profession and passion I love dearly.

So for the next four exams, out of which I’m dreading just the one, I’m going to work hard to combat this fear of “I don’t know when this will ever be useful to me”. Because if I grew up thinking that, I wouldn’t have ever studied Math. It’s direct application in my life continues to evade me.

Also, yes – I did skip uploading blogposts for the last 4 days. Trust me though, blogposts were written and saved. There’s no way I’m breaking this streak of writing.