Terrible Mistake: What Can One Do?

[ank_gl]

What do you do when you come to know that you have comitted a terrible mistake, & everything you hoped you ll get when you made the decision, was never there. Now you can't turn back, what can one do? Keep fighting to change the things to be the way they should be? or give up, & adopt to the ways things are..

 

[Shilly]

keep fighting, don't settle for anything less than what they should be. What is there to lose? If you don't, i suspect you will regret it in the future.

 

[Choppy]

Why can't you turn back?

We need a few more details to give you any practical advice.

 

[ank_gl]

I have made a wrong choice of college, I settled for an inferior college & I am regretting(as shilly pointed out). I was just a feather away from getting the college I wanted, but I couldn't & I had to take admission in my college(I couldn't waste one year then, not possible in this part of the world). It isn't that my college has lesser facilities or lesser infrastructure, but it is the faculty which is soooo unbelievably dumb(because its a state funded college).

It wasn't so bad till 5th semester(I could do away with the teachers actually, they weren't so annoying & stupid). But now in 7th sem, Professor DUDE(heat transfer) says he won't give any marks till I follow his book, his units, his nomenclature, his methodology, everything. He gave me 0 for a problem which i correctly solved because I used T_infinity instead of T_ambient, & i felt like I should hit this guy with anything I can get my hands on. Machine Design professor says that if I use CAD to present my drawings, he should start grading the computer, not me. He is far more interested in the drawing rather then design steps. An endless list, i can carry on for days writing..

Anyways I could bear with it, mainly because marks never bother me, I regularly score good in what i like & 40s in what i hate. But now the project I had for final year was canceled & I was allotted a project in production management(something of that sort, I dunno), which I completely hate. Its been over a month since I have been talking to people in my department to change my project, but nothing is happening. And i seriously feel like beating up the faculty. I don't know what to do, whether to just float along or file a case against the faculty in charge. If I don't do anything, I ll fail miserably, If I do something, faculty ll ensure I fail miserably.

I ll go to college tomorrow, & either i ll be suspended or I ll have my project changed, i dunno

 

[Moonbear]

So, because they are being tough on you and expect you to do your assignments as they are assigned, you think they are stupid? Sorry, I have no sympathy for you if that's your attitude. It sounds like you want to be lazy, not to the assignments, get away with sloppy, careless mistakes, and still be permitted to pass the class. Where I come from, you have to EARN your grade and degree, it's not given to you for just showing up. When a student fails or is kicked out of a program, they've earned it themselves.

 

[ank_gl]

assignments?? where did that came from?? what makes you think i am lazy?I do all the assignments as they are given. I never copy as most of others do. I complete my work well before time. I have done everything right which i supposed was right. I haven't left my fate on the stupid college.

Passing? I have never failed a single test i appeared for, not even job interviews(I have 2 jobs at present).

But I don't feel bad at your remarks. From what I have heard from friends & relatives in US(assuming you are in US), engineering is seen with a lot of pride & students put a lot into it. Unfortunately in this part, engineering has become more of a high school certificate, you need to have one to get into a good business school & finally a job in a bank.

Coming to the problem now, its not just me whose projects got canceled, the whole list was randomized & everything was reset when some students(maybe 10 or so) had decided their projects & finalized them with professors. Now because some students(actually most of them) didn't submit their papers, the whole class was allotted new ones. Is it my fault that no one cares about engineering here, its just a degree, the intent is to get in a B school, make more money. I am tired of all this, I can't fight with everyone to protest against the faculty? But I know, I am not doing a management related project, even if stupid college suspends me.

I didnt ask for your sympathy, I asked for some guidance.

 

[chaoseverlasting]

I have made a wrong choice of college, I settled for an inferior college & I am regretting(as shilly pointed out). I was just a feather away from getting the college I wanted, but I couldn't & I had to take admission in my college(I couldn't waste one year then, not possible in this part of the world). It isn't that my college has lesser facilities or lesser infrastructure, but it is the faculty which is soooo unbelievably dumb(because its a state funded college).

It wasn't so bad till 5th semester(I could do away with the teachers actually, they weren't so annoying & stupid). But now in 7th sem, Professor DUDE(heat transfer) says he won't give any marks till I follow his book, his units, his nomenclature, his methodology, everything. He gave me 0 for a problem which i correctly solved because I used T_infinity instead of T_ambient, & i felt like I should hit this guy with anything I can get my hands on. Machine Design professor says that if I use CAD to present my drawings, he should start grading the computer, not me. He is far more interested in the drawing rather then design steps. An endless list, i can carry on for days writing..

Anyways I could bear with it, mainly because marks never bother me, I regularly score good in what i like & 40s in what i hate. But now the project I had for final year was canceled & I was allotted a project in production management(something of that sort, I dunno), which I completely hate. Its been over a month since I have been talking to people in my department to change my project, but nothing is happening. And i seriously feel like beating up the faculty. I don't know what to do, whether to just float along or file a case against the faculty in charge. If I don't do anything, I ll fail miserably, If I do something, faculty ll ensure I fail miserably.

I ll go to college tomorrow, & either i ll be suspended or I ll have my project changed, i dunno

Are you from India by any chance? I am in Delhi and though I'm only in my third sem, I can completely sympathize with you. I absolutely hate almost all my teachers and I've come to the conclusion that the college can't help me, they can at most set down rough guidelines for me to follow. All the subject matter that I need to be thorough with will most probably not be covered well in class and hence I have to buy books written by foreign authors that explain things from the fundamentals up because the books used by the majority of the students are those from which you study 10 standard questions and hope to pass the exams by. I've worked on projects in robotics, graphics and mathematics so far in college academics and I've not had help from a single teacher as of now. Forget it man. Just let them be. Do what you want to do. Do your own projects and follow your own interests. Let them run their bureaucracy and get the damn degree. From what I've come across, if youre capable, things in the industry are different. Just get through this.

So, because they are being tough on you and expect you to do your assignments as they are assigned, you think they are stupid? Sorry, I have no sympathy for you if that's your attitude. It sounds like you want to be lazy, not to the assignments, get away with sloppy, careless mistakes, and still be permitted to pass the class. Where I come from, you have to EARN your grade and degree, it's not given to you for just showing up. When a student fails or is kicked out of a program, they've earned it themselves.

Im sorry Moonbear, but things really are different here. If only things were like that! I would kill for things to be like that! Where you would actually have to EARN your degree, heck, if that were the case don't you think India with its large number of engineers would have a really strong research culture or that the leading institutes would be filing a large number of patents? I recently read in a magazine that a large number of the so called engineers are unemployable and have to be retrained by the industry!

Maybe I haven't seen enough to give you a very good idea or opinion of the way things are, but from the little that I've seen and gone through, this is the way things are. They are changing, but very slowly.

 

[ank_gl]

Maybe I haven't seen enough to give you a very good idea or opinion of the way things are, but from the little that I've seen and gone through, this is the way things are. They are changing, but very slowly.

you have seen enough of it. a serious advice, don't ever read the BOOK your seniors or your teacher tells you to. Only thing it ll do is it ll make you pass with flying colors(you might have noticed it) with absolutely nothing in your head. Choose things wisely if you really want to be an engineer here, else they won't let you become one.

Really good point there, if India produces almost same numbers of engineers as US, where do they go? No where, they end up in a B school. This country is trying to take a short cut to what US & EU took centuries to achieve, with basically no hard work. Corruption, castiesm etc, this country ll self implode.

 

[ank_gl]

I recently read in a magazine that a large number of the so called engineers are unemployable and have to be retrained by the industry!

that was none other than Mr CEO of Larsen & Toubro.

 

[Hootenanny]

This thread has just turned into a moaning session and no longer falls under the category of 'Academic Guidance'.

Thread locked.