Revisiting Student-hood

To become a student again after four years of graduating is a strange feeling. It's like a constant battle between the freedom one can take and the forces of institution that tie you down. This time, the feeling of being a student is a different one - something between the states of being confident and the underconfidence that you wish to fill up through your further study. As against the undergraduate study course where all is welcome and acceptable as a part of your learning, graduate studies are about foucsing, chanelling, tuning, fine tuning and sharpening your skills into one area for specialization. This process calls for a lot of discarding of what may be apparently interesting for you to know, but not necessary for you to learn. Thus, the probability of things you should be doing reduces.

On the other hand, being an 'alien' student in a distant country, I can now relate to experiences that students going to cities from small places for education undergo. I am sure that my present difficulty would help me appreicate and empathize with what outstation students undergo when they come to a new place, especially a city. The exprience of a city is overwhelming, since it gets you landed in an extremely complex web of rules, regulations and unfamiliarity at once. Inspite of the fact that I am not in a big city in US - infact I am in a very small town (not even a city) - I can feel the friction of unfamiliarity.

Unfamiliarity with history, culture and people; with systems, regulations and ethics of the place makes me quiet and feel secluded. Being a town, one doesnot see much activity here. And soon, when it becomes cold, streets will be laden with snow and there will be nothing to look out through my large window! The disconnect with a place due to your cultural roots being somewhere else can be distracting. My mind is preoccupied by thought of what can be done of this distance that I feel with this new culture. I generally try to fill this distance through writing and recording. In the recent days, I have found myself too distracted to record too...

And I absolutely dislike the fact that my experiences are following the trajectory of 'culture shock theory'. Where on one hand it comforts me, it also makes me feel quintessential...

But I am managing. Quiteness helps looking inwards. And perhaps it is one big aspect of learning.

Waste around New Haven

Around New Haven, I always find people carrying packaging boxes that they may have just emptied off a new item. The dustbins of the city are full of these brown card board boxes. Even inside the buildings, the dustbins always have a lot of cardboard.

Packaging material here can be perpetually found lying on the streets. Such stuff tells differnt stories of the place. That people are constantly engaging in newer products. That perhaps people are constantly changing, and hence constantly buying new products. That the University is buying a lot of new product all the time. That packaging in the US is intensive...so on and so forth.

However, all this material never goes to any further use. The nature of garbage in New Haven is much different than what I would find in Indian cities. There are many times when people may walk up to a dustbin and pick up thigs from it. It's absolutely a normal practice to so it in the US. But what is also tells about this society is that it's limits of seeing the potential of 'material'. The inventive minds of India would try and use up much of all the material before it actually finds place in the garbage can.

For example, we save most of our packaging, often turning it into containers, cutting it for smaller things, selling it to the nearby raddi wala for some money -- in the process of which we mobilize a lot of things and ideas. It gives rise to a certain kind of culture and chain of entrepreneurs. There is no such dimension here. Social space is very flat, and further reduced by the ingress of computer and technology. Technology has made this place, to a large extent, physically immobile. And on the other hand, they crave for more and more speed. Thus landscapes are flat, and textures are plainer...

First Sunday in the US

The Notion of the Campus

In the first week of my arrival at Yale, I found myself asking to the representatives at the international office, "What do you mean by a campus: when am I technically on / off campus?" This unanticipated question received a weak answer. My anxiety with the whole notion of campus was relative to the cultural baggage that I carried along with me from my country.

All campuses I visited in India were bounded entities. Be it CEPT, IIMs, or even regional universities. They are sets of buildings interspersed with a bit of landscape within a confined region. I imagined Yale to be like that too. However, the nature of Yale campus is different. The campus of Yale firstly means buildings that belong to Yale, and operate for Yale University. They could be administrative, educational or recreational. These buildings are interspersed within the town of New Haven, although within a definable geography. Thus the campus map of Yale overlaps with the map of the city.

It was only when I started attending my classes in different departments that I understood the nature of this campus. In some ways, it is interesting because throughout the city during the day time, you see students fluttering from one street to another. The University has mixed up completely into the city (town will be a better word - New Haven is hardly a city). Therefore people prefer to bike (cycle). Walking from one department to other could take you 10 -15 minutes. Walks are never boring across these 300-year old buildings.

'On campus' you have free wifi access. Many a times, you have weak wifi signals while walking on streets, leaking out of the thick walls of the university buildings. Yale has a free shuttle (bus) service which perhaps ties up the campus together. In some ways, it defines the University geography. The campus is tamed to a large extent. Buildings have been appended with wheel chair accessibility ramps, 300 year old doors are inflicted with electronic locks,  interiors are painted white and bright - and all this is done absolutely elegantly.

The Yale 'blue' dominates the colour scheme throughout the town and there is strong architectural control on the signage design. Blue = Yale. Or perhaps, like navy, cobalt or sky, there should also be a Yale blue - wonder why we never heard of it! But what I mean to point out is that colour defines the bounds of the campus too.

These bounds become very important after 6pm and before 6 am since students are advised to 'remain in groups', 'not carry expensive items' or 'not flash your phones' especially during this time period. Within these bounds, we can avail special security services between 6 pm to  6 am! Thus, the campus redefines itself through circuits of security routes.

Finally, from whatever extensions the meaning of campus could have, I have realised that the glossary we worked with in India has a different dictionary for itself here. It would take me time to understand these nuances of language (purely word-meaning relationships) to be able to fit myself into this new system perfectly.


This post can also be found at www.yalestories.wordpress.com

Culture Tickle

I have been in the US for two weeks and what people call 'the difference' is sinking in now. There are both - pros and cons of this difference which is what I am going to attempt noting down here. I have been wondering since the first week if I  wanted to just 'travel' this new country or 'be here' for two years. Cultural adaptation becomes an important issue when you are going to spend a considerable amount of time in a new place - which means a new geography, new ethnography, new ethics and new climate. The constant struggle of rationalizing a future - or perhaps resolving a future creates further complication with the notion of cultural adaptation. What I essentially mean is that it may be as difficult to get into a culture as getting out of it. Meanwhile, this conflict has arisen between the culture that I assumably must leave behind and that which I am in geographically / ethnographically etc. There are simultaneously two aspects that I need to think of - my original roots and my new ground. If I remain in the middle, I would be losing out much of both the worlds - or at least that it what it seems right now.

In one's attempt to keep peace with both these worlds - there is a mental friction. In the beginning, this is pronounced since one is trying to catch up with two different time zones - and at the same time, switching between cultures while communicating, adjusting to accommodate both these worlds into the same time frame. Imagine being awake at the end of the day to talk back at home when your parents want to and being fresh yourself in the morning to attend to your work in the morning. Or vice versa. When you can not cope up these two worlds within a single time cycle, it creates irritation and frustration; making you feel inefficient. The comparison of this inefficiency with your recent past when you were able to manage much more in the given time makes you feel even worse. This coupled with a lot more activities that you need to balance yourself which were once taken care of by your family members makes you almost vulnerable.

Although, managing a lot more activities is an anticipated phenomena. A more crucial thing is the loss of friends, family or room mates with whom you can share these things. Some people are lucky to move in to a same course or program together with a known friend to a same country. Other people who like things harder make a choice like me - completely isolated from any familiarity. Building this new familiarity almost feels like responsibility. Otherwise, there is no social security or space that you look forward to. The construction of this social space  is really important and essentially you do not know the limits of it - you therefore constantly try to limit it, often to just a single person or two. That may not always be healthy.

On the other side, there are beautiful things that you encounter too. Here, I would become more specific and talk about my experiences.

I never thought Mumbai - the place where I come from is such an important dot on the map. As soon as you introduce yourself as a resident of Mumbai, you can almost see a sparkle in their eye. Mumbai has perhaps become more popular because of Rahul Mehrotra being the Dean of Harvard's Urban Planning Department. However, as more and more students from western countries are being taken to India, Mumbai for studying urban space, I am generally able to find common ground to initiate a conversation. On the other hand, India still remains an exotic location for people to travel. My background in architecture and therefore knowing places helps in connecting further with people  where I am generally familiar with Indian cities that they have visited. Talking about idiosyncratic ideas on India is interesting and I find it fascinating to know peoples' impressions of the East.

Architects are highly regarded here and that is another positive dimension. But in general, all people are highly respected, as long as they are involved in any kind of education. Since systems here are so liberal, many people also do not pursue education seriously.

Lastly, in an orientation, one of the speakers said a very sensitive thing: "You may think that back in your school, you were the best and you would always be amongst the top five; and in the initial semesters, your performance may go down. Many people take it as a challenge to their egos. But remember that you are in a University like Yale, and thus in a class of no. 1s from all across the world. So remind yourself that you are competing with the best of the best, and you are one of them. Don't prejudge. Give yourselves time."

And that quite sums up the feeling right now...