viva la kgpia! - 1

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My son, who did his M Sc from IIT KGP from 1999 to 2004 says that the three most helpful things of the KGP System are:

1. Innumerable Vivas (both grand mal & petit mal)

2. Common First Year Curriculum

3. Central Library

Each of these would require several blogs if honestly written, but let us focus for the moment on Vivas:

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Soon after his M Sc, he joined the splendid Software Firm, Ocimum Biosolutions @ Hyderabad, floated by our enterprising Physics Alumni Couple as a Software Developer Trainee and took about a year of Day & Night labor to master Java, Sumatra, Borneo or whatever, of which I know a little less than nil like of Solid State Physics.

Then one day in his second year his Boss met him and told him that he needs a KGPian in Pre-Sales and sent him off to Paris to demo and sell their Software Product to a renowned Multinational Drugs & Pharma Lab.

He was grilled there for a couple of hours by two no-nonsense CEO & Project Manager Ladies apart from a dozen other formidable Users .

He says that but for his KGP Grand Viva Training he couldn't have survived it and would have fled with copious tears...nothing short of Mass-Screwing.

A year after Bringing in the Project, Managing it, Delivering it and Training them on-site, there is this Group Photo at Paris in which he and his colleagues are surrounded by the User Team with the two Tigresses beaming.

And daily he thanks his Grand Vivas, Seminar Vivas, Project Vivas and hundreds of Lab Vivas for the training to stand up to an intimidating, bullying, jeering and smirking crowd of highly respected and knowledgeable people (he didn't know it then and must have been cursing unmentionables beneath his breath).

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Among the hundreds of students whose Grand Vivas I attended (unwillingly), I had to pull up only one who also happened to be the Topper and my Project Student in GR and a favorite of DB (I had to stand sweating in a long queue at the KGP Post Office to dispatch his several gold and silver medals, checks, certificates and prizes to his home address later on at his request...at KGP the winner used to take them all).

He had everything that was needed for success: communication skills, knowledge, information, persistence, perseverance, IQ...except that he unfortunately displayed an Attitude Thing in that Outgoing Viva, which bugged me.

That Grand Viva had the External Examiner, HoD, lots of Senior Professors of all Branches and back-benchers like me sitting and helping conduct it.

Whenever an honest question was asked in a subject he ought to have read but perhaps didn't consider important enough, he would shrug his shoulders, turn his hands out and say: "I don't know!" off-hand.

After a repeat of this several times I had to tell him off:

"Too many IDKs means IDC" (IDK was short for "I Don't Know" and IDC for "I Don't Care").

That worked; and pleased everyone; and he got his Ex alright!

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