Pay your bills

Another in the series of rants about my college, but maybe this one is something no one must ever have experienced before. At least not someone who belongs to a college so famed, owned by as large an institute as Bharatiya Vidya Bhavans.

I was to take the permission for one of our computer labs for a workshop conducted by IEEE-SPCE-SPIT. Well, we have a centralised system in place in our college. All permissions need to be signed by our `esteemed` principal.So i had to go to my principal to get the permission letter signed.

She has a reputation of causing a lot of trouble whenever people come to take permissions like,checking for spelling mistakes, improper grammar of sentences , format of letter etc. I double checked everything before going to her.

I have concluded that she's a sadist. She can generate more and more trouble without any efforts.First, she made a big fuss about the word `IEEE-SPCE` being written in the letter[1].
She made statements like 'I can't understand what's written. Which college is this?'.
Then after i made her understand that our student branch is registered as IEEE-SPCE but all our activities our conducted as IEEE-SPCE-SPIT, she moved on to cause further trouble.

(certain statements have been removed for no particular reason)

Principal: Who gives you the money to fund these activities ?
Me: Ma'am, Our student branch funds it.
Principal: But where do you get the money from ?
Me: We get sponsors for our events.

(Now comes the real fun )

Principal: But who's going to pay for the maintenance of the PCs, the ACs ? Who is going to pay for the electricity that you are going to use ?
Me : (silence)

I was honestly shocked to hear such a question.

Principal: Do you know that the college pays Rs. 1,00,000 as electricity bills every month.
Me: No. Ma'am but these events and workshops are useful and help the students a lot.
Principal: Fine, but they are extra-curricular activities. They aren't in your curriculum are they? They are not there in your syllabus.
Me: (of course, silence. What would you have said if your principal said this ?)
Principal: I am not saying anything about your usage of electricity during your college hours.But for all these extra activities, I will give you permission only if you give it to me in writing that you'll pay the bills for your usage. I'll speak to your IEEE counsellor about it. Should i write it here and give it to her ?
Me: No, it's OK. I'll convey your message to her. Thank you Ma'am.

..and i left. Well, it was a weird experience. One that I've never had before. Didn't know some PhDs can be as illogical as our lecturers...
I then went to our IEEE counsellor. I won't write about that conversation here because I have too much respect for our IEEE counsellor.But we were assured that the workshop would happen and it did happen :)


[1] My college ,when I joined, was split into two parts.
SPCE - Mechanical, Electrical and Civil Engineering ( they get grants from government )
SPCE Unaided wing - Computer Science, Electronics and IT ( we don't)

Two years ago the unaided wing became SPIT - Sardar Patel College of Engineering
I currently belong to the last batch of SPCE - Unaided Wing
And the principal I wrote about is the principal of SPCE Unaided Wing and SPIT

Banking on College

Good investment guides say , one should have 10% of their assets in banks and the rest, the 90%, in various other investments.
But a very large number of people, do the exact opposite. They keep 90% of their money in Banks and 10% in other good investments.

An engineering college is so much like a bank.

Students spend 90% of their time in college and 10% doing other things, whereas it should ideally be the other way around.

C'mon, even if you put as large as 90% of your assets in the bank, it never gives you any advantage than its meagre interest rate of around 5%.
Same is with college. Infact it's worse. There isn't even an advantage of 5% for spending more than 90% of one's time in college. And i have not even counted the 40k that i additionally invest every year :(

Segmentation Phault

Some programs were giving Segmentation fault. That is because the OS cannot fetch the memory table. Those are technical difficulties. I can't go to OS level and do anything about it. For those of you, whom the program was working - take printout

-- An OS lecturer at SPCE

Er, please don't read the last line of this web page which says about `This page is licensed under ... ` blah blah
I won't claim any of that :P

Is this what happens when the same lecturer teaches you Digital Logic and Design in one semester, Database Systems in the next, Operating Systems later on, and then Computer Simulation and Modelling in the future ?

That's four core subjects dumped on her !