My Tryst with "Placement"

I think I first heard the terms IIT-JEE, AIEEE and such weird sounding names when I was in 11th or so. Call me dumb, call me ignorant, that's how it was. And I am not ashamed of sharing this with people. And I am not hesitant to ignore people who think my parents were ignorant too to not point me in the right direction. I sympathize with such people. I got into the trap of these so called entrance examinations during my +2 thanks to my very good friends. And to my surprise, I loved falling into the trap. I still consider it as one of the major turning moments of my life, because it triggered a set of events after that, which I believe, have turned me into a better person. And which have acquainted me with hell lot of observation and experience, one among them the madness behind another not so weird term "placements"

When I hear the word "placement", the first thing that comes to my mind is cricket and Rahul Dravid. Strange but true. While every other Indian is crazy about the game, they don't remember the game when they hear the word; but I, who hardly watch cricket matches nowadays, do. Not that I don't want to be rich, have cool and high paying jobs like the rest, I seem to lack the enthusiasm to prepare for such things. And like every other guy who talks of Moh-Maya after an exam he fucked up, I seem to do the same when it comes to placements. And if you are wondering if I opted out of placements, I did not. I sat for 3 companies in my undergraduate college. Got into one. In a company which leaves me to wonder as to what is their motive of conducting interviews when they are pre-determined to make an offer to such a huge lot of students. That is a different matter altogether and not something I wish to talk today. Often my little idle brain tries to think as to what might be the reason behind this "placement" madness. I had been privileged to be a part of 2 national level institutes of repute; something that people from my part of the world dream of and admire. I was (and still am) always of the view that studying in such institutes of repute should free up your mind of any insecurity of a lucrative career prospect. You will get it. But then, I tend to forget that the amount of remuneration I hold as decent is treated by most as too meagre by their skills and limits. I don't bother to question their intent or choices, never wish to pass on an argument in disfavour of them. Because I know every one of us have our own paths and our own unique ambitions. But it is in our very nature to conceive our views as right and question others'. Am I different? No way. Some days ago, I had expressed similar views on the madness behind placements on the social site facebook in response to an student's apprehension regarding the fate of this year's placements owing to the slow rate of growth of the Indian economy and some insightful predictions of recession by a multinational "dream" bank. I do not wish to reveal the name of the bank nor do I want to know how they predicted the future economic state of the globe. As a matter of fact, the "future predictor" bank often wrongly predicts its personnel requirement and ends up laying off a huge chunk of its employees every quarter or so. That is not important and a different matter. What I responded to the post on the site was as to why do we need to be so worried about something like the economy right now over which we have no control and that jobs are something that are already guaranteed to the people like us studying in these type of colleges; what we needed to do was to make the best out of education here and enjoy the last few years of our college life. As expected I was bombarded with a lot of comments countering my view. But what struck me the most was this one post which stated that placements are the only thing which is important and relevant in context of today's education. I didn't know what to reply to that. And I chose not to.

(to be continued...)