I have less than one month left before I leave India. It’s a very strange feeling… I don’t think I will know how I feel about that even after I get on the plane. However, we still have a lot coming up and I am determined to fully enjoy all of it.
So see? I truly have been working. The academics are nowhere near as difficult as at home – definitely not the main point of the program. Still, we are all conscientious enough students that we are doing fairly well despite the highly frustrating differences seen between our academic attitudes and those of our professors.
I know that I haven’t done the best at giving this impression, but I am actually here to take classes. That’s what we do to fill the time in between all of our trips, you know. For the most part they are going alright…
The first class that we started when we got here was Marathi (6 credits)... it’s the regional language here. So far, we are... well... far worse than we probably should be. Very rough conversations are possible, but for most of us that’s about it. It is difficult to learn and to teach as a second language to English-speakers because so much is different. For the most part, we can identify most of the script, but the majority of the words that the script spells out mean nothing to us. Still, it is fun to be able to read road signs and shop names. Those of us who have learned foreign languages before are picking up certain things faster and the three international students who are already at least bilingual are the best of all... no surprises there. Our professor is the director of the program and we usually take the last twenty minutes to tell riddles and jokes. It’s pretty fun, but we all wish we were better at Marathi. We had our second written exam today; it was frightening and I don’t think I did well.
We have Contemporary India (4 credits) twice a week, once each with two separate professors. Our professor on Monday lectures most of the class and then lets us ask questions about what we have read or seen in the news. He has been covering the structure of India: government and political parties, history and important figures. That is my favourite class here. The format of our Friday section is quite different: two students lead each class after we all read one or two articles on a particular topic: gender or religion, the Dalit or farmer’s movements. Most of the articles are at least twenty years old and quite opinionated. It is a dreadful format for a class. None of us are learning anything because our professor basically does nothing except sit in the corner while we tell one another what we already know from reading the article and answer discussion questions. At the end of every class, we come to the same two conclusions:
-First, we are a bunch of middle-class white kids who know basically nothing about whatever issue it is that we happen to be discussing because we don’t actually live in India
-Second, the only possible solution to any of these problems is improvement of the education system. The issues cannot be changed by policies, the mindsets of the people must change instead. So, if we actually could do something, that is what would need to be changed.
The whole thing got very redundant by the third time we had done it... not a single one of us enjoys it at this point. Actually, yesterday I presented with one of my friends on the environmental movement. We decided to make things a little different so no one fell asleep this time and started out by having people write haikus in groups of three. We only talked for about half of the class and then things kind of fell apart. The professor informed us that she was disappointed in our lack of enthusiasm. Several of us badly wanted to answer that we were disappointed in her lack of teaching, but we held our tongues. Anyway, not everyone’s favourite class.
Next, we had the choice between three electives (4 credits): Public Health, Indian Literature, and Indian Cinema and Society. I chose the last one because it was the only one that I had any chance of getting to count for credit. It definitely will not make it on the list of classes that I enjoyed during my educational career, but I also could have a better attitude about it. The teaching style of our professor doesn’t mesh well with my learning style. Also, the style of the movies we watch doesn’t really fit my taste: they are kind of along the line of Nobel prize books, which I have never enjoyed. I guess I’m just picky about my books and movies. We spend a lot of time on the meaningless symbolism behind certain shots and the attitude that the director wanted to convey by a particular camera angle. Personally, I get bored of that rather quickly, but knew it would happen though and didn’t really have a choice if I wanted to get credit for something so I truly am trying to make the best of it. Besides, while it may be slightly frustrating, it’s not as bad as the literature professor who is determined that no one will get an “A” in his class. We did end up having a pretty great experience through my cinema professor though. Two weeks ago, all of us got the chance to go see a movie about Phalke, the “father of Indian cinema” at the Film Archives here. After the film finished (and it was spectacular), we got the chance to talk to the director for a while! It was a great experience.
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| With Paresh Mokashi, the director of Harishchandrachi Factory, I think the best film of its genre that I have ever seen. He isn't a trained director... he just decided one day that he wanted to make a film. |
The last element of our coursework is the independent study projects (4 credits) that we each are working on. My project is… currently under revision, which is not very good considering that the due date is less than a month away. Originally, I was intending to research India’s policies regarding human trafficking. However, I was advised against that as it wasn’t really a topic that I could research in three months. So I turned to low-income education, as that ties into human trafficking somewhat. Fortunately, I have gotten the chance to work with another of the students who is also studying education. We were hoping to interview schoolchildren of around fifteen years old as a part of our studies. The problem has been that a) our initial approval with our home universities took a considerable time to acquire, and b) our interviews need to be with students from government schools, which means that we need approval from the government here as well. Unfortunately, the bureaucratic system here runs… well, slowly is an understatement. The combination of everything means that we don’t have the approval that we need and thus cannot conduct any interviews. So… my topic has changed yet again to where it will be only source research and no interviews. Additionally, to give myself more material, I will be adding in more of my original idea. Needless to say, I have a lot of work ahead of me, but it will all get done. It’s a relief to know now what I need to do and not be waiting on anyone or anything, just be able to get on with my work. The end result will be a paper of minimum twenty-five pages… the longest that I have ever written in my life.
Just a couple trips specific to the program or anyone who might have an independent study project to complete while abroad…
21) Get your ISP off the ground as much as you can before you leave home because everything here runs slowly. When you get abroad, don’t expect anything to work the same. A good tip that we heard was to plan on getting one third of the work done in thrice the time here that you would expect to complete back in the United States. That is not an understatement.
22) Choose something you will enjoy. Unless you are going to get credit for it back at home, you don’t even need to make it academic. You can study different styles of music, dance, or cooking. Having your interviewees be the other students is a great idea. One of my friends did a project on geographical first impressions and had us all draw mental maps. There’s no need to necessarily pick something super academic, especially because those are guaranteed to take longer and be more difficult anyway. Besides, you don’t want the difficulties to just dishearten you to the point that you don’t want to do anything about it anymore.
Actually, the trip this past weekend to Mahabaleshwar was not really a vacation but more of a conference to discuss our projects. We all know roughly what one another has been working on it, but it was interesting to hear how everyone has progressed. Each of us took about ten minutes to talk about it and then got comments and questions from everyone else, including our two professors who came along. So, nineteen students at around a half hour each… we were sitting and talking about projects for a little over ten hours. Lots of fun… yey! Actually, it was mostly enjoyable. We got to sit outside on the veranda of our hotel where we could watch the monkeys jumping around in the trees if we got bored. Still, we faced a bit of difficulty with the weather. The majority of our presentations took place on Saturday and it began raining heavily part-way through, making it difficult to hear and eventually getting us wet enough that we needed to go inside. Then the power went out, so we sat there for a while presenting in the dark. But we just kept going – we are at the point where almost nothing phases us anymore – and it was still fun apart from a few obnoxious questions and comments.
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| Project briefings at Mahabaleshwar... don't we look like we're having fun? |
Check back in tomorrow as I am going to write even more! Having a functional computer is great.
*L*
Maybe you'll have the opportunity to give feedback on some of the teaching issues after the program is over...
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