The dive: more important than the swim?
“Getting a job is a dive. You can have a magnificent one. But you are in a swimming competition, not a diving competition.” I heard this somewhere a long time ago and it has become one of the many one-liners which I keep mentioning in my ‘deep-shit’ talks. But as I navigate my way through the peaks and troughs of engineering life, I realise more and more what our “education factories” have turned us into. Churned out in batches of thousands, we are expected to have the same knowledge, same skills, and the same strengths. At this juncture, it is rather easy and common to blame the institutes, the professors, and most importantly the ‘system’. But if you think about it, why wouldn’t they turn into factories? After all, they are delivering what is expected from them. After investing lakhs of Rupees and four years of one’s life, what is the minimum output every student expects? A job! That is what our education institutes seem to have reduced to, mere recruitment agencies, dancin...