Did education kill the creativity and dreams of that wide-eyed kid?

Three years into my bachelor's at one of the top universities in India, when I look back to my first day of college, I see that wide-eyed kid full of hope and ambition, filled with dreams ready to be pursued. Today, I wonder where he disappeared into. His dreams remained dreams and his yearning to create something huge is strangled between obsolete academics and the constraint of time. This feeling that if only I could have done things differently is felt by everyone at some point but I guess I should be glad that the flow of time is only in one direction because everything that happened made me who I am today.

The harsh reality of higher education in India is something that is often overlooked. No matter how many new IITs and NITs are established, no matter how much funding goes to research, and no matter how many schemes are introduced, the harsh reality will remain the same. We are only trying to support a system that's faulty in it's fundamental pillars. Today, I drop in an open question to all the students of the country. Are you happy with the education system you are a part of and the knowledge and experiences acquired through it? I'd bet more than 99% would say a 'no'.

There are three more open questions I want to ask;

1. Is the concept of departments justified at a bachelor's level? How can any student fresh out of school decide what they want to pursue for the rest of their life before hand without actually gaining first hand experience of learning something and exploring various options available to them? No wonder, most graduates end up working in a domain that has nothing to do with what studied at college. (The solution may be to design a more robust system focusing on personalized education tailored to meet the talents and interests on a one to one basis. That's a topic to discuss for another day!)
2. Why is the grading system biased? Everyone is grading differently in different universities and at many places it is left to the discretion of the professor but the final pointers are treated as a uniform parameter for performance measure when it clearly isn't. (A better approach may be to give more importance to achievements, practical experiences, and projects and removing the grading system entirely or grade on things that matter and practical skills rather than marks. I will definitely cover this in a different article)
3. The R&D environment and innovation in the country, is the scenario promising at all? All I see is brilliant talent left to rust, treated like dust, and ignored as an insignificant speck, and extraordinary students performing much below their potential. Many others end up taking up jobs they are not passionate about, killing their dreams for societal acceptance, and living a semi-standard life full of regrets forgotten with time. This cycle of normalcy in the lives of people continues. I am talking about those who have the latent potential to bring out a revolution but no catalyst to unleash it.

In this article, I want to focus on the third point above, something I deeply pity on. Education that was meant to empower an individual destroyed their creativity and cornered their dreams. A lot of people tell that our education system is the one that produced top CEOs and other great business leaders. What I feel though is, that's not their potential. In fact they may be far more capable than that. They went on to be who they are in spite of the education system and not because of it. There may never be "the next big thing" happening in India even though we have the talent and human resource, if nothing changes.

My utmost passion in mentoring got me calling to do something about this, to rekindle the true essence of education, learning by doing, and to guide those who were left without opportunities. That's how I started 'The Research Nest', I know, I'll fail numerous times in my pursuit to create that positive impact in the society. I know, I'll face a countless hurdles in my pursuit to bring in a revolution, but I also do know, that I'll never give up.

"If practice makes people perfect, passion makes people perseverant"

What follows is my passion project and my journey so far with it.

The Idea and How We Started

The main inspiration behind Research Nest came from the student community we were a part of and a friend who inspired us to think about how we can make this world a better and a happy place. Every year we see countless students around, even from top institutions in the country struggling to find some meaningful research opportunities with academia and industry alike. There was a huge shortage of opportunities and facilities. In most engineering colleges, students are hardly taught about latest technologies, current research trends, how to conduct research, network with researchers elsewhere, write papers, publish their work in journals, and present them in conferences. Despite huge talent pool and potential, seeing a student at bachelors’ level conduct some meaningful research was rare and many others just waste their precious time with no direction to head towards. There were two main reasons, we identified;

• Students had no proper guidance, mentoring or background knowledge on how to get started. Their textbooks never taught them what was required, their professors didn't either.
• Students didn’t have access to the required facilities and the resources. Sometimes, students were not aware of the facilities they had or what they even required.
• The enthusiasm and motivation to do something unique eroded with time as college days went by. Many students lose all hope and settle for the mediocre jobs they acquire via placements, whichever came in their way. (Ironically I may end up in that same path, but I do wish that I don't)

It was clear that the scenario is local engineering colleges was much worse than the IITs and top NITs. Many students graduate even without a single meaningful internship experience, sometimes, they are just unable to find it.

My idea was to help them all. To reach out to every single student in India who wants to conduct research, find and innovate upon something new, to support them, guide them and help them. And so, 'The Research Nest' was born. We wanted to make all the knowledge, resources, and facilities required accessible to everyone. But how can we do it? by building a platform and a community around it, that can support something we call 'Tele-Research'. You might have heard of 'Tele-medicine', defined as follows, “the remote diagnosis and treatment of patients by means of telecommunications technology.” We define the concept of 'Tele-research' as collaboration and conduction of research remotely by using telecommunication and other related modern technologies. For now, our primary focus is in the field of Computer Science.

I started "The Research Nest" as a small online community of like minded individuals on November 11, 2017, a day I'd probably never forget. Supported by a Facebook and LinkedIn page, we had a plan. The first step was to create an online presence before the core team was assembled. Initially, I had ideated of a fancy name, Advanced Knowledge, and Intelligence Research Association, in short, it was to be called Project Akira or Akira Labs (in that moment, that silly wide-eyed kid was reborn!), but then we thought of a more simpler name, for now, something that represents a nest or network of visionary people who conduct research and bring new ideas to life, and so we eventually named it 'The Research Nest'. Today, Research Nest primarily functions as a media publication and an R&D house backed by young Engineers covering and analyzing the latest happenings in Science and Technology. We also promote research culture in students and enrich the common man with technological knowledge.

The Team

Our core team is small at this moment and we are on the lookout for like-minded individuals to join us. I myself, a final year engineering student from NIT Trichy take care of all initiatives at The Research Nest. The next key member, who joined me in January 2018 is Vijayalakshmi, another student from NIT Trichy. She played a key role in building our online presence and developing content for Research Nest. I had two of my friends, Satheeshwar, another final year student from NIT Trichy and Arul from SSN College of Engineering, Chennai who helped me in my journey with their useful advice and support since the beginning.

In fact, I had assembled a team back in December 2017 and the first time, we didn’t do it right. It was a complete failure and we never really took off or met our immediate objectives and the team was gradually dismantled. That experience helped me come back much well prepared.

We have volunteers from across the country remotely working with us since February 2018. Since then, we have established a content team, a marketing team, and a research team, all of which are led by me. We were growing as a community and people were showing great support but this is just the beginning.

What problem do we solve and how?

The focus of Research Nest is to improve the research scenario in India among UG students. To help more students get published, work on the latest technologies, and gain access to the state of art facilities, and to identify and nurture talent before they get trapped in the rat race.

Another main objective is to bridge the gap between current trends and curriculum to meet the latest developments in their field of study. We have launched an education-based blog on Medium for this very purpose for which our content team delivers top notch content related to latest activities in Science and Technology and other latest technical concepts, not covered in any academic curriculum.

The next main problem we solve is the lack of new ideas among students. We no longer think the way we used to think in our early days. Innovation is dead and I yearn to bring it back to life. Research Nest acts as an idea powerhouse where we work towards innovating on new research ideas and mentor the students in pursuing them and obtain successful outcomes. It's like a think tank. Thinking, questioning, introspecting, and understanding of problems that can be solved with new technological developments is a part of everyday routine here. Education has failed to imbibe such skills in me, but I want to ensure no one else gets wasted like that.

In our journey over the last 6 months, we have come no where near the end goal but we will continue our pursuit. We are also currently working on 3 research projects by tele-research methods (as an experimental testing phase) as mentioned before. The success of the same will decide our future steps. We plan to publish our findings in major journals and continue to provide more students with meaningful research opportunities which they can pursue freely.

As for the next steps, we will be pitching in with all major research laboratories and forge partnerships with other organizations to help us carry out tele-research more effectively.

One of our ultimate aims is to connect a student with a revolutionary idea at one remote corner of the world with a researcher or a professor at the other corner who can test that idea in his lab, and the result? the next greatest scientific advancement.

There are however, a lot of difficulties and challenges to face in this but nevertheless, this passion towards what we do fuels our enthusiasm. To be able to bring about any change, I myself will have to first gain expertise in multiple domains which I am currently working towards.

Countless students in India today can’t find research opportunities and internships. Even those who find some are disappointed with their experience. Eventually, students go abroad for higher studies for better prospects. I believe India has a huge potential to make the next biggest scientific breakthrough. Investing a lot of time in such a venture is indeed a risk and comes with a cost but I know for sure that this is something that will help students and something we ourselves wished we had as a student. Where guidance and mentoring meet untapped potential and where innovation intersects with excellence, a revolution is born and that's exactly what Research Nest envisions, to be that revolution.

I take this opportunity to thank everyone who supported my vision since the beginning and been a part of this exciting journey and special applause to those who rekindled creativity in my soul and passion in my heart.

To conclude with, I want to share a few perspectives. Most times, only success stories come into lime light. Almost always, the failures of an eventually successful person are what are discussed everywhere. There are so many others out there in the industry who are not doing what they really wanted to do in life, living in silence, adjustment, and pseudo-freedom. One main reason I can think of was lack of guidance, awareness, and support in the primitive years of their career and education. In a study conducted by Aspiring Minds, it was concluded that only 7% of the graduates are employable in core fields for which they spent 4 years studying. What about the rest of them? Who's fault is this? Another aspect to think about is, India has more than 6000 engineering colleges. We all just talk about the IITs, NITs, and other so called institutes of national importance and eminence, but what about the rest of the 5900+ colleges? My mission is to support all of them giving access to true learning and guidance in how they should take forward their career and this mission is my passion!

I want to highlight the Steve Job's question that my fellow campus editor, Rohit Ahuja mentioned in his previous article; “If today were the last day of your life, would you want to do what you’re about to do today?”

With respect to a professional career, the day when everyone out there will answer that with a 'yes', is when I can tell that my mission is fulfilled. If an education system fails to support one in pursuing their dreams and interests, together as a community, we will have to do it ourselves. What do you think?

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