Moments of pride and regret from my 4-year long college experience.
May 12th, 2022: I found myself bowing in conclusion in front of an external panel of jurors, faculty and mentors as I wrapped up my final project presentation. Four years at the Indian Institute of Art & Design had led me to that one slide, and everything after that was something that I wasn’t prepared for.
Just like that, it was all over. A wave of congratulations, some critical & constructive discussions and a couple of goodbyes later, I walked out of the institute for the final time. I do not seem to recall my exact feelings at that moment but vividly remember that it felt somewhat like an unsettled goodbye. Things that remained unsaid, bottled up inside me, screaming to be heard.
This article is a feeble attempt at closure; to say everything to everyone and to myself. By doing so, I hope to close this chapter of my book, record my learnings succinctly, and try to inform other college students around the world by using my experience as an exemplar. This is what I leave my four-year journey at IIAD with.
Eugène Delacroix is often quoted with the line, “experience has two things to teach. The first is that we must correct a great deal and the second, that we must not correct too much”. This stands true for this reflection as well.
There are things that went right for me and things that I now wish I had done differently. In this article, I shall cover both viewpoints and leave the takeaways to your own judgement.
Things that went right.
A teacher-student relationship beyond the usual paradigm.
One of the good things about studying in a design school is that you’re introduced to mentorship. Apart from the usual delivery of lectures and explanations of theoretical and practical concepts, your relationship with professors need not end there. They are equipped to shape your professional practice and inform your understanding of life, should you seek a student-teacher relationship that goes beyond the ordinary.
Developing a meaningful student-mentor relationship requires an overlap. The student must be willing to know more, to extract more from the person of experience and knowledge. By fulfilling the student’s curiosity, mentors are also subjected to rethink the concepts that they teach, better articulate them for a detailed explanation and sometimes even build upon them because of a question put forth by the incessantly inquisitive student.
I was always like this. I wanted to know the ‘why’ behind everything and it got me into a lot of trouble in grade school. However, in design, this ‘annoying’ curiosity is appreciated and even desired in a student. I often found myself questioning professors in their lectures, asking them why they were teaching a concept in a certain way, what was the reason behind restricting us to a particular format and even sometimes blatantly asking them why they were teaching that course at all.
This burning desire to know more forged some extremely meaningful relationships for me during my four-year-long journey. I started out as a student without any formal training in art or design and by the end of it, I was discussing course structures with professors and proposing changes to them. In another case, a mentor sustained his relationship with me even after he left the institute and helped me during my project even though he wasn’t academically obligated to do so.
Mentors such as these have provided me with opportunities that I would have otherwise never had access to, a platform to collaborate with them and a definitive source for answers when I couldn’t arrive at one, whether in work or in life. A teacher or professor will guide you through a project or lead you to a particular outcome, but a mentor will remain a guide for life and I’m fortunate to have quite a few of them.
Developing my own way of thinking.
One of the things that I’ll forever be grateful to IIAD for was the opportunity to form my own way of thinking. In every field of work, people attempt to solve problems. Usually, a prescribed template is followed because it’s successfully worked in the past and change is an unnecessary risk.
In design, however, you’re empowered with the opportunity to question everything. Therefore, there is no compulsion to follow a prescribed template. Of course, most people end up doing so because it saves time and effort but some people don’t. Fortunately, I became one of them.
Epistemology, pedagogies, methodologies, frameworks, thinking tools, approaches … I became an absolute nerd for these. When I came across a new approach to solving problems or a new system to classify information, my eyes would light up like a Christmas tree. Come to think of it, I was sometimes more fascinated by the concept of problem-solving rather than solving the problem itself.
During my time at the Science Gallery Bengaluru as well as in my interviews for a full-time job, I realised that the world outside also appreciates this approach; where you’re reconstructing processes based on the requirements of the problem at hand. Of course, some organisations also view this as a problematic trait. In a lot of my interviews, I sensed this and politely declined before we could discuss further. However, if you are someone like me, I would like to tell you, with great amounts of affirmation, that there are people and organisations around the world that value this enthusiasm and, sometimes, you might just be hired because of it.
When has anything radical come out from a slight modification to something that was already done before? People who want to innovate will always look for other people who want to shake things up and wade through the difficult waters of the unknown; for that is where the gold lies.
Travelling. Alone.
Before the beloved pandemic, I somewhat lived the life of a dirtbag climber: travelling on a budget, backpacking, climbing peaks and rock faces; most of it alone. I was the sort of guy who would pack up a bag and head out, without knowing where I was going. When I narrate my stories to people now, they are fascinated and often tell me that I have lived multiple lives. At that time, I did not comprehend that what I was doing at 19 were things that grown-up people would crave for in their adult lives. This realisation was so fascinating.
In 2022, I felt like a grown-up. I felt how I was now bound by responsibilities. A friend described this realisation as ‘being sucked into the corporate hole’. Although I don’t quite agree with her pessimism, there is an undeniable change in the amount of freedom one can exercise while working, compared to the freedom available in college.
I am glad that I made the most out of this. I would often pack a bag and leave for the weekends and spend my holidays climbing peaks or rock faces.
What this did was fulfil a sense of adventure that all human beings have as a fundamental need before I joined a workplace. It informed my understanding of life and what we city dwellers consider normal as I was subjected to many extremes during my travels (mostly because I couldn’t afford comfort). It also developed my perspective on what things are universal and unite people around the world together, and what are variable and temporary results of culture. This knowledge became fundamental when trying to make products for human beings of the world.
Things that I wish I did differently.
Sustaining relationships.
What stung me the most as I walked out of the gates of my college for the last time was the number of people in my batch that I interacted with on my last day and conversed beyond small talk. Zero.
Don’t get me wrong, my batch has some wonderful people with whom I had the opportunity to share time and space with. Some of the most memorable moments of my life are with them. I’ve lived with these people, I’ve laughed with these people, I’ve cried with these people and I’ve loved with these people. However, with time, each of these relationships was ruined. By the end of my final year, I was left with none.
Over time, we grow comfortable with putting the blame on other people; viewing them as the problematic ones. The destructive image of a successful lone wolf was so fiercely desired by me that when I reached some semblance of success, I realised how it means nothing when you don’t have people to share it with.
It was like that for me. I had a fantastic project and subsequent jury, as well as a solid plan for the next year at least, but I was so unsettled by the fact that I could not even talk to a single person from my batch. I realised this in November and moved out to Bangalore in January for my final project. I remember discussing reasons for doing so with a friend and I said, “I just want to save myself the pain of walking into class every single day and being rendered invisible”.
It’s not like I didn’t have the right people to forge relationships with but that I was incapable of fighting for them and sticking through the bad times. If you’re in a space where you have the luxury of meaningful relationships, do everything in your power to protect them. Detaching yourself and hoping that the void will be filled up by something else is a futile activity.
Letting other people take control over my narrative.
This is the bitter part of my bittersweet experience.
Aesop wrote that “every truth has two sides; it is as well to look at both, before we commit ourselves to either”. The problem arises when one side becomes the prevailing perspective because the other chooses to run away. My sides to stories about me remained contained within me and ran away with me, for I did not have the energy to sit and defend my character against people whom I had once loved and who loved me back because of my very character. Strange to see how they would sit back and let stories float around with my name being dragged through the mud.
This obsession with assigning the role of a villain and a victim in a story where the victim is the storyteller is so inadequate to form an absolute opinion. However, this is what happens in the real world. People believe easily because pursuing the truth is a difficult ordeal.
In my time at the institute, I had a couple of relationships that ended on a sour note. Not ugly but sad nonetheless. What followed was a classic case of Chinese Whispers.
Stories about me reached my ears with zero semblance to reality. If these gossip mongers were to stop and ask the two people actually involved in the story, I am sure that they would have been met with explicit disagreement. But that wasn’t the case and I’m not quite sure whether the truths were skewed in the dissemination of information, in the head of the other person or in my own recollection of the past.
Thankfully, I had a group of juniors who were initially my mentees but ended up becoming my only friends at the institute. In a recent conversation with one of them, he mentioned that he had overheard a petty incident and could not believe it to be true, for it went against his image of my character. Initially, I restrained myself from blurting out my side of the story, for it felt like an unneeded chain of mud-slinging. But then I realised, that if I don’t stand up for myself then who will?
I wish I had done this earlier on as well but I decided to run away from it. I isolated myself, shifted cities and found solace in new friends. This isn’t the right thing to do. Every time I entered the institute after leaving it in January, I felt its hostility bite into my skin. That isn’t a pleasant feeling to associate with such a wonderful institute and my wonderful time there, if one looks at the larger scheme of things.
If you’re hearing things about yourself that aren’t true, stand up for yourself otherwise the world loves to blame a villain and life amidst the blamers becomes living hell.
Saying no and nitpicking.
No was my go-to answer in college. No to parties, no to drugs, no to alcohol, no to social gatherings, no to events … no to pretty much everything that you can think of.
A few months into college, I observed people around me use means of intoxication. I, on the other hand, had developed a strong aversion to it at an earlier stage as more and more people around me had succumbed to the social pressure of ‘trying it out’. The problem here wasn’t the intoxication itself but the fact that I looked down on people who consumed it. This led to a major dissociation between me and the college community.
In design school, it is almost stereotypically accepted that everyone has either tried / or continues to consume some substance or alcohol. Some don’t. Most do. What I didn’t realise at that time was that it is a conscious life choice that people make. Neither perspective is absolute and, therefore, you should not expect everyone to align with your own. When my friends started bowing down to the social pressure of doing these activities, I looked down on them as if they were weaker individuals. I loathed their inability to stay true to who they were without realising that this is a change that they’re consciously making to themselves and that I should try and accept the evolution of their character. It’s just an add on, not a change to their entire personality.
I held the same dislike for most other social gatherings. Fests, clubs and house parties were considered meaningless activities. I usually spent the same time either reading or climbing or working. While this led to immense self-growth, I now feel deprived of experiences that most of my peers had.
While I don’t mean to tell you to go out and become a junkie, remember where your ‘no’ is coming from. If it’s coming from a place where the activity at hand collides with your morals as a person, then that’s okay. But if it comes from a place of judgement because your 19-year-old self thinks that this isn’t the way to live life, then that is problematic.
And that’s it. Four years at a place of immense learning, diverse experiences and life-changing times; summarised neatly into three points of pride and three points of regret. In the next chapter of my life, I wish to begin anew and not repeat the same mistakes twice. For you, I wish that this article informs your approach to college, or to life and even if it contributes just a little, I am grateful.
While ending this article, I wanted to thank everyone involved in my journey. I sat down and began thanking everyone by name. Halfway through the list, I realised that it was extremely lengthy and I doubt that I’d be able to cover everyone who impacted my life. If you’re reading this line, it is likely that you are one of them and I’m extremely grateful to you.
Thank you & goodbye.
