Monday, September 10, 2012

another suicide at iit madras

these are the excerpts taken from the india today

Within a fortnight of joining the M.Tech programme at the IIT Madras, S Merugu Manasa (21), from neighbouring Andhra Pradesh has committed suicide at her hostel dormitory on Tuesday evening. But, it turned out to be a revelation for the family that the brilliant girl had kept her marriage under the wraps.
While the parents were unaware of it, records at IIT showed that her hubby was Srinivas Minisala, said to be working with Infosys at Hyderabad.
'Sakhi', the Telugu version of 'Alaipaayuthe', featuring chocolate baby Madhavan and Kollywood sensation 'Shalini' was a great hit. The film revolves around the lead pair getting married while pursuing their studies and finally getting integrated with their families. Even the songs were hugely popular.
Police have informed both her parents and husband about the death.
Hailing from Ramagundem in Karimnagar district, she had entered into wedlock with Srinivas Minisala, her batchmate at the Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University, Hyderabad. She joined IIT to pursue specialisation in Chemical Engineering and was a resident of the Sarayu Hostel Extension in the campus.
She was sharing the dormitory with seven others. Within a few days of entering the campus, Manasa had disclosed to colleagues that she was married. Known to be fun-loving, her decision to end her life has come as a surprise to her room-mates and others.
Academic pressure could not have been the reason for the suicide is what a senior professor maintained since classes have commenced only from August 1. She has not left any suicide note. This is the second suicide by a student in the campus since April.
Soon after her enrollment, Manasa left for home and after a stay of three days had returned on Tuesday morning. According to her room mates and the hostel staff, she looked a bit disturbed. Police said she skipped lunch, telling her colleagues that she would join them later.
Instead she locked the dormitory from inside and hanged herself from the ceiling fan with her duppata. Though the incident had happened at around 2.30 pm, police were informed only after 4.30 pm. Police investigating the case said personal problems could be the reason that had driven the girl to take this extreme step.
Her roommates who returned in the evening they found the door locked from inside. With no response, they alerted the hostel authorities and the door was broken open. The body was sent for post-mortem and police said her family had collected the body from the hospital.
In a twist to this incident, a photojournalist of an English Daily who visited IIT and took pictures was assaulted by a professor and the security guards. The professor had asked the lensman, who was on his way back, to delete the pictures he had taken.
On refusing to do so, the professor and the securitymen thrashed him.
After the issue snowballed into a controversy, IIT Madras Director Bhaskar Ramamurthy issued an apology for the attack on the photographer.

Myths about iitians

i am listing here few facts about iit students overriding the myths

1]iit students are very brainy , godgifted etc.- yes we are brainy but not godgifted. each and every iitian works hard in his life, in fact very hard compared to other undergraduates. whatever he/she has achieved , its because they have worked hard to attain that.
2] students study all the time in iit- most funny myth. we are also human beings. we love to play, to watch movies , to hang around with friends. but the thing is we are so good at managing our times that all these things do not actually interfere with our studies.
3] iitians work hard for a course throught the semester-false, there are aa few who are regular but i have seen almost each and every iitian putting night outs the day before the exam. we excell even in that , we have the ability to study what was taught in 4 months in just some 15 hours.
4]cleared iit jee,,,...life peace....-----the real life starts after you come to iit. though education is not at par with the level of what jee is ,but the rigor of the curriculum makes you to fire up your ass 24X7.

Profs at IIT

now here i sit and decide to write something about the profs at iit. though i am not using profs of iit madras but my views and ideas are based solely on what i saw inside iitm. however my friends who are in other iits also often complain about the same things. so i think i can generalize things here.
some major drawbacks of the profs at iits
1] most of the profs have never been an iit btech student. it affects their understanding of the students whom they teach.
2]Those who are new experiment too much- as in i saw two profs taking courses for my branch who were first timers. iit gives profs infinite freedom to conduct the courses in their own way. though this rule was made  to make things better, it ultimately does nothing but increases unnecessary rigour in the students life. for ex- one of my profs divided the total marks for a course in the following fashion{newcommer}
    quiz1-10
    quiz2-10
    10 assignments-20
     1 project-10 marks
    5 surprize quizzes-20
    end sem-30

    it may sound fascinating to one who has never seen the iit doors but dear believe me, it's not that easy when you have 8 courses along with some labs in a semester.
3] they are good researchers-  a teacher is someone who can effectively make one know what he knows. iit profs are not selected on the criterion of how good they can teach but instead on how good they can do research works.

but not all profs are so , there are many who teach very well. some goods about iit profs-
1] they are very knowledgeble people- if you are talking to some iit prof assume that he knows all the thicks and thins of his subject.
2] they have devoted their life for the betterment of the nation- out of all profs i have seen and interacted with at iit madras i have never seen anyone who came to iit to earn a living as the sole purpose. they are the ones who contribute significantly in nation's development. however it almost never makes any headlines untill and unless the thing they have done is like a milestone in some field or is pathbreaking.
3]they are (almost) friendly with you with a few exceptions.