Retrospective on 3 years of Diploma College

Photo by Daria Nepriakhina 🇺🇦 on Unsplash

Backstory

So, for those of you who don’t know Diploma or Polytechnic is exactly very similar to Engineering or the formal engineering degree which you do after fucking yourself up with JEE or +1, +2. The way a polytechnic course is exactly similar to a Degree course, hence, I like a Polytechnic or Diploma as the lite mode of engineering. Because, it’s a 3-year course, 1st year being the basics with all the mixed things and then setting out paths for the specific fields you want to pursue.

My first was only half because of the first sem being online. I studied a lot during the first year (especially math) because I’m a weakling at it and whatsoever I did wanted to have a backlog in it. After the 2nd semester, I started picking up interest just to lose interest in everything.

During the initial days of each semester, after looking at the subject names I used to feel very excited. Even while choosing a diploma I was very excited that I’d formally learn computers or programming as my majors but I had no idea it would turn up in the wrong way. After the initial days of learning a particular subject and knowing that the teachers knew nothing about it, it was very obvious to lose interest. Moreover, because of this, I started becoming more of a critic or a judgmental person. In the last 2 years of my diploma, it’s very little that I must not criticize anyone on some day.

The initial years went into criticizing and cross-questioning teachers. Slowly, I started questioning why would one take up a particular job when one know that they can’t go into it too deep, and soon I realized that it was the basic human needs that forced an unskilled individual into teaching those skilled subjects to a student. At the end of the day, they want their families to survive. I’m unaware of how legitimate this thought of mine is but yup that’s what it is in my mind. Moving on I stopped blaming teachers because that was giving a wrong influence that kids these days want to sound cool by blaming or bitching about teachers in institutes. And I started feeling, “That’s what going on everywhere, everyone pays school and college fees and go to tuition or the clever students end up learning stuff on their own either from the internet or the youtube” and I stopped studying for my college syllabus daily because that felt way too boring to me.

Surrounding

What surrounds us is what is within us - T.F Hodge

Then comes the surroundings, I’m someone who learns more from the surroundings I’m in. Obviously, I did not have a very great surroundings here and that is not the case with only my college. There’s nothing different happening, engineering colleges must’ve been at least some better but diploma colleges and that too in a Tier-III city are worst. This was the time when I realized not everyone comes to engineering with engineering being their passion or liking, most of them are here for jobs,

Venturing with some people at FOSS United events gave me a good idea of what culture means to be in person. I already had pretty much an idea of how culture in colleges or workplaces should be, but when I start being in the FOSS United community that was when I experienced “culture”. Hence, I began to notice that we never grew up in that culture or our city itself did not ever have that culture neither anyone tried to bring in the culture.

I with two friends of mine tried doing some change by organizing a FOSS Conference in this tier-III city and thought that even if I could get some 10 students to change their minds that would do good and be worth the pain of the whole plan. I had a lot of debate with Vishal regarding hosting conferences instead of small meetups because if Pune meetups have the turnouts of 3-4 heads then I would have to sit alone by myself in the meetup. But still after all the arguments and debates FOSS United was ready to sponsor 10k for us which was a very big amount and it just went fine. But it was very far that I realized all of the efforts were just nil.

Mindset

The mindset played a huge role here after culture. It’s upon the individual how he wants to approach things, some so-called clever individuals approach the way of getting higher marks and then high-quality college and then that high-quality job that they think they will get. But let me tell you, that’s very fucking hard when you’re a diploma student. Sitting at the last bench of my classroom, I often used to think about how are they not able to see what was coming next for us. Being in the FOSS United community and working for FOSS United I realize every now and then that it’s only the skill that can help me learn, survive and get the work done here and not the marks, the big college, or whatever shit.