5th sem

Aha!
So CB has found some time between his exams to reflect upon his wonderful four months spent, without knowing the why and how of things; what people otherwise call a semester. The fifth, to be precise. It gives him great pleasure to tell the people of the world and the readers of his blog, to be precise, that at the present moment, he in happy, overjoyed and almost gay.

The mechanical engineering experience in the last four months has been, to say the least, at it's incredible worst; an experience of the kind which makes you feel that even arteries popping out of your body and sitting on your skin is an enjoyable mouth watering sight; right from getting mocked at by your grandfather with a deeply humiliating albeit an exceedingly true comment which roughly translates, in an unshaven male dominated world of an IITian as 'I already shagged on this 50 years ago. Why the fuck are you shagging on this now', to an introduction in a chapter called Gears in Machine design, which reads 'Gears form an important part of engineering. They were first used in Pre biblical times'. You start wondering if you're here 5000 years late, don't you.

The professors, simply try their best to outperform the others in being worse. It is, at times, of great interest amongst mechanical engineering students, to start a heated debate about how a professor can improve in his teaching and dressing skills. It usually concludes with both the parties agreeing that they wasted half a score minutes talking about it. There also seems to be a common phenomenon: As students near graduation, they learn how to dress themselves better, by simply looking at their profs. A few of them come with pants having more threads than the cloth, while some come dressed as Raymond models, not realising that the fabric is not all that is seen. The slides of the PPTs they present are similar, with background colours that seem to reflect all colours.

The course content, to say the least, again, is alarming. Alarming to me. There seems to be only one aim of the entire thing: Become dumber as you read. Pages and pages of mugging how a green coloured machine swivels about an arm which rotates about an axis perpendicular to the tool motion which is parallel to the machining surface. Analysing something of this nature? No, not personally satisfying.

Right, ditch the course content. The books, even worse. There is this book on Turbomachines, which is made only for those who have sinned. A book which cannot be read with a speed greater than 20 words per minute (So, all you dashed CAT aspirants, buy this book). Reasons? Varied. The figure referred to in the text is numbered differently in the diagram, has different symbols used, is hand drawn, and is at least five pages away. Moreover, how many books have you read where the spacing between consecutive lines increases as you read down the page? Makes you want to call up the publisher right away and blast him, till you realise they've given a fake number.

All in all, not worth it. No wonder people start running away from Mech.