I was born uneducated; unfortunately education didn’t change that...

I finally triumphed procrastination! Back to the blogging world! Allow me to explain what I mean by the title of this post.

I was a decent student in a state board school, landing with good 10^th and 12^th scores! As a kid, I was very fond of tinkering around with anything I could get my hands on. Machines or anything remotely gadget-ish would not go unscathed. I was very sure I wanted to be an electronics engineer. I got into a respectable college in Mumbai and I had the time of my life in the first three years. Then, out of the blue, came the most shocking revelation. I got placed in an IT company. Don’t get me wrong…I absolutely believe in the power of IT and its immense contribution. But I did not study 4 years of electronics to work in IT. I wanted to work in a core electronics company and then eventually land up in automotive electronics. Accepting an IT job was the end of that dream.

As fate would have it, with little effort from my side and a lot of help from a friend, I landed up in an automation company. I still remember the first day I walked into the office. I was ushered into a lab where some young lads, not more than 2-3 years older than me were working on some sci-fi looking kits with wires and LEDs sticking out. I was intimidated. If this was a lab, what was that where I did my engineering practicals?

I was lost and scared. I could not understand a single sentence of what I was told about my work. Embarrassingly, the work was directly related to a subject I passed with “flying colours”. I could only register words - motor, converter, inverter, duty cycle, power amplifier, logic controller. I couldn’t retain anything more. I realized that the concepts backing these were not very different from what I had mugged up to pass my exams, but I wasn’t confident to apply them in real world!

I had learned about Nyquist and Bode plots, Fast Fourier and Laplace transforms, but the real high was to use a Bode plot to make a machine work. And these were not some ‘hi-tech’ machines! These were machines used by cottage industries based in MIDCs and GIDCs. Machines used to pack medicines, chips and biscuits. I automated simple, efficient and cheap machines using the very basic principles we loathed in engineering. What a high it was! Exams and marks never gave me that feeling. Those moments, when you could see a machine produce something of value, something a common man can use every day…you start believing in engineering. You start living like an engineer!!

My manager used to say, Engineering is not a profession, it’s a religion.

How many of us have had that high, when we picked a problem, used our knowledge and made something of value, something useful to someone? I never felt I could do that when I was pursuing engineering. We never learnt how to use that knowledge, what’s the purpose of what we learn. We never asked, hence we were never told. I wish I asked “why” more often when I was studying. I wish I could experience engineering rather than being taught about it…

Tell me and I forget, teach me and I remember, involve me and I will learn - Benjamin Franklin