I was so afraid of missing the alarm that I could hardly sleep. After waking up 3-4 times in the middle of the night, finally I was glad to see the clock tick 5:30AM and my alarm took off with its "my heart is beating" tune. Yes it was indeed beating aloud.
I volunteered to act as a scribe for a visually challenged student. The very thought of not being able to make it to the examination hall in time would give me shivers because I am reminded of a scene in Stalin Telugu movie where the agony faced by the student is shown. I informed Ranjith when I was starting and by 7:15Am I was there at the hall even before Ranjith himself arrived.
Ranjith arrived with his mother and it was hard to believe that he was visually challenged. He would look at your face when you are talking! He is that sharp. I checked the room number at the hall and sat in the staff room. As soon as the bell rang, I was asked to get the question paper from the hall that was assigned to Ranjith. The hall was wrongly allotted, after some running around, I could finally catch hold of his question paper.
I read out the questions to him once and he was cool. He seemed to know most of them. He wrote the exam well. He attempted almost all questions. The interesting thing here was that we were writing the exam in a staff room and the staff were all excited to help him with his answers while he was pretty comfortable answering himself :-) !! ..
Everything went smooth except for one thing that Ranjith was being troubled by the authorities there for getting a different scribe for every exam. (It seems only one scribe should write all exam and that too a scribe not from his subject). He was requesting me to check if its possible for the same scribe to go on 17th and 19th for him. That would lessen the pressure on him. They were literally scolding him.
And as an experience for me .. it was new ... the way he was presenting the answers .. he would say.. "this in the next line sir" .. "leave a space of 2 words here sir" .. etc .. and in the middle .. "lets assess the time once sir... how many more questions do I have and how much time is left sir" .. etc . these were some things i will not forget .. and the kind of issues he was going through .. his mom was saying that the other day he fell sick due to the pressure and the uncertainty about the scribe!! .. and I could relate that because when I called up to tell him he was like .. I was very tensed sir.. thank you very much sir etc ..
I was trying to ask him how do you usually arrange for your scribes. He said his ma'am arranged or something. I could sense a lot of uncertainty in the whole thing. After struggling so much with the audio lessons for hours and days .. they definitely deserve some help to present the things they have grasped. It is a very sad state to see that they need to worry so much about it .. I felt very bad about it.
Guess what .. some of the questions in the exam .. he said .. i don't have this material in form of cassettes sir .. so they are out of my scope sir !!! .. I wondered what the text to speech systems are doing lying idle in the labs of research centers if they cant reach out to such needs.
I felt an urgent need for some kind of streamlining of this scribing process. There are so many volunteers and there is so much need .. its only the gap of a bridge ... a platform .. . And if rules like same scribe should write all exams is there, then some kind of pay to scribe system can also be thought of. There are hundreds of students who are in need of small money also. So, something like if they are paid 200 or so for each exam they scribe, the students can avoid these kinds of issues from authorities .. and I am sure there will be many to sponsor for scribes. Lets see if these thoughts take some shape some day ...
I thank Samvedana for providing me with this opportunity.
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Thursday, March 19, 2009
It Worked !!
After a tiring day, I was walking towards my room at 1 AM in the night. Climbed the stairs and when I was at the last turn which would lead me to my room, I heard a continuous loud noise. Sounded like some waterfall. Went to the window to check out what was going on and it seemed to be some kind of over flow. It should either be a water tank overflow or a break of pipe leading to uncontrolled water flow. It was quiet a heavy noise and seemed like lot of water was going underutilized.
I was too tired and lazy to climb the hundred stairs again. I said to myself, "How many times will you keep doing this. To what extent will you do this. There is no end to it". The background to this being switching off lights in bathrooms in hostel, conference rooms at work place and closing the taps whenever there was no one to use them. Every time I answered to myself, "let me do whatever I can, instead of taking this lame excuse of how long and to what extent and in parallel put in some efforts to convey the importance".
After some internal negotiations, I decided, let me take it to the notice of people responsible for it and there I can leave it. The onus would be on that person. It would be his choice to do whatever he would want to. If he acts on it, well and good and if he doesn't let him feel the guilt. At least I need not! So, accordingly, I went to the ground floor again and searched for the security guard. They were watching some movie. I told him that water was overflowing and lot of water is going waste.
He came out of that room and pressed a red button which is next to his desk as if he knew what was going on!. It seemed to be the switch to a bore well and he sounded like he forgot to switch it off! :-) .. I was not even having the energy to ask him to be more careful the next time! :-) .. Felt thankful for the issue getting closed so soon and felt good that my reasoning which pushed me till there worked.
So it got strengthened. I said to myself again "If I find something happening the way it is not supposed to, my minimum responsibility would be to bring it to the attention of people responsible for it. From there on, the choice is theirs!"
I was too tired and lazy to climb the hundred stairs again. I said to myself, "How many times will you keep doing this. To what extent will you do this. There is no end to it". The background to this being switching off lights in bathrooms in hostel, conference rooms at work place and closing the taps whenever there was no one to use them. Every time I answered to myself, "let me do whatever I can, instead of taking this lame excuse of how long and to what extent and in parallel put in some efforts to convey the importance".
After some internal negotiations, I decided, let me take it to the notice of people responsible for it and there I can leave it. The onus would be on that person. It would be his choice to do whatever he would want to. If he acts on it, well and good and if he doesn't let him feel the guilt. At least I need not! So, accordingly, I went to the ground floor again and searched for the security guard. They were watching some movie. I told him that water was overflowing and lot of water is going waste.
He came out of that room and pressed a red button which is next to his desk as if he knew what was going on!. It seemed to be the switch to a bore well and he sounded like he forgot to switch it off! :-) .. I was not even having the energy to ask him to be more careful the next time! :-) .. Felt thankful for the issue getting closed so soon and felt good that my reasoning which pushed me till there worked.
So it got strengthened. I said to myself again "If I find something happening the way it is not supposed to, my minimum responsibility would be to bring it to the attention of people responsible for it. From there on, the choice is theirs!"
Tuesday, March 03, 2009
My friend, I didn't mean that !
...The world of opposites
Recently in many of my interactions, I am experiencing how language can be a big barrier in communicating what one wants to and how the understanding of something changes drastically depending on the existing mental categories. Let me try to give those real incidents.
Proposal: This institute is not for those who are looking for just a job at the end of the course. ( Assumed understanding: This is a place of learning and one would like to see students excel in computer science and grow into responsible individuals. Job is a natural consequence, but it should not be the ONLY target).
Conclusion Drawn: If you are interested in making a living after college, this is not the place for you.
When the students were suggested that they should sleep early, and not trouble themselves much, It was surprising to see that the student(s) actually concluded that sleeping late is not allowed in their campus! And they seem to feel the pressure of losing their freedom of sleeping late!
In another instance, some students ate the food of a canteen which is supposed to serve healthy food on campus. They did not like the food. It was not tasty. And everyone says that the food there is healthy food. And in a short period, guess what the conclusion was. “Healthy food can never be tasty”! I was surprised to see this conclusion.
Yet another surprise was when the discussion of “how much do we need?” was going on. I proposed that what all we need as of today in terms of food, clothing, shelter, the instruments (accessories) for making a non-compromising living can be listed down. And that usually this need remains like that with minor variations. The conclusion drawn implicitly was that one should not live a comfortable life, we need to cut down our requirements and that we can do with little money! :-) All this without even actually doing the exercise of listing down the things that one is looking for!! While the exercise actually was aimed at illustrating that the “things that we need” which we felt to be an infinite list is not really so long, its just that we have not attempted to collate all of them!
Pawan ji says “In languages we tend to make (false) categories and these are given to us as realities from early childhood. We get used to a binary world of opposites – day/night, sunrise/sunset, man/woman, girl/boy etc.etc. Though these are all different from each other we start taking them as opposites. The notion of opposites reduces the space for understanding things properly”
Proposal: You are encouraged to eat food within campus. (And we are striving to improve the food on campus)
Conclusion: Students are not allowed to eat outside campus.
May be in some other instances even I was making such conclusions! One way I think of avoiding or at least minimizing such interpretations, especially when the audience is new and skeptical about anything we speak is to speak out the assumptions too. Speaker need to probably take more care in communicating what was really meant. For example, the case of telling that the institute is more interested in you learning the courses and excelling in the field and it is not about just finishing the courses could be explained in more detail.
Apart from the way we are brought up in the world of opposites, one thing that pushes us towards concluding the opposites is the lack of Trust. When we are sure that the other is trying to tell something which he wants to be of good to me, we cannot easily concluded the opposites. It is the sense of feeling exploited or the feeling of being dominated that might trigger these negatives easily.And these conclusions only aggravate the situation.Not good for anyone. So lets be more careful in communication.
Recently in many of my interactions, I am experiencing how language can be a big barrier in communicating what one wants to and how the understanding of something changes drastically depending on the existing mental categories. Let me try to give those real incidents.
Proposal: This institute is not for those who are looking for just a job at the end of the course. ( Assumed understanding: This is a place of learning and one would like to see students excel in computer science and grow into responsible individuals. Job is a natural consequence, but it should not be the ONLY target).
Conclusion Drawn: If you are interested in making a living after college, this is not the place for you.
When the students were suggested that they should sleep early, and not trouble themselves much, It was surprising to see that the student(s) actually concluded that sleeping late is not allowed in their campus! And they seem to feel the pressure of losing their freedom of sleeping late!
In another instance, some students ate the food of a canteen which is supposed to serve healthy food on campus. They did not like the food. It was not tasty. And everyone says that the food there is healthy food. And in a short period, guess what the conclusion was. “Healthy food can never be tasty”! I was surprised to see this conclusion.
Yet another surprise was when the discussion of “how much do we need?” was going on. I proposed that what all we need as of today in terms of food, clothing, shelter, the instruments (accessories) for making a non-compromising living can be listed down. And that usually this need remains like that with minor variations. The conclusion drawn implicitly was that one should not live a comfortable life, we need to cut down our requirements and that we can do with little money! :-) All this without even actually doing the exercise of listing down the things that one is looking for!! While the exercise actually was aimed at illustrating that the “things that we need” which we felt to be an infinite list is not really so long, its just that we have not attempted to collate all of them!
Pawan ji says “In languages we tend to make (false) categories and these are given to us as realities from early childhood. We get used to a binary world of opposites – day/night, sunrise/sunset, man/woman, girl/boy etc.etc. Though these are all different from each other we start taking them as opposites. The notion of opposites reduces the space for understanding things properly”
Proposal: You are encouraged to eat food within campus. (And we are striving to improve the food on campus)
Conclusion: Students are not allowed to eat outside campus.
May be in some other instances even I was making such conclusions! One way I think of avoiding or at least minimizing such interpretations, especially when the audience is new and skeptical about anything we speak is to speak out the assumptions too. Speaker need to probably take more care in communicating what was really meant. For example, the case of telling that the institute is more interested in you learning the courses and excelling in the field and it is not about just finishing the courses could be explained in more detail.
Apart from the way we are brought up in the world of opposites, one thing that pushes us towards concluding the opposites is the lack of Trust. When we are sure that the other is trying to tell something which he wants to be of good to me, we cannot easily concluded the opposites. It is the sense of feeling exploited or the feeling of being dominated that might trigger these negatives easily.And these conclusions only aggravate the situation.Not good for anyone. So lets be more careful in communication.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
