Sahil Saha had a choice. He could either go into one of the IITs — after all, he had cracked the JEE-Advanced — or he could join any place close to home where he could study physics, which is what he wanted to do. Hard to resist as the IIT tag is, Sahil was very focussed.
He tells The Telegraph, “I picked IISER (Indian Institute of Science Education And Research), Calcutta. Looking back, I feel I made the right decision.” He continues, “A BTech degree from IIT would have landed me a decent job but I did not want to go into the corporate sector. I wanted to do research and IISER gave me that opportunity.”
In Home in the World: A Memoir, Nobel laureate Amartya Sen writes about how he arrived at the decision to study in Cambridge in the UK. The idea of going for higher studies to England, he says, “first germinated” in his father’s mind. He had enjoyed his time while doing a PhD in agricultural chemistry at the University of London. Sen’s father asked him if he would like to go to the London School of Economics, and an uncle suggested Cambridge.
Sen writes, “So I went to the British Council library to obtain information about colleges and universities... As I looked through the material on the different colleges in Cambridge, Trinity jumped out at me. I knew something about the college for several different reasons.”
He continues, “My cousin Buddha had spent six months there as a trainee in the Indian Administrative Service just after Independence... I also knew a fair amount about Newton and Bacon, about Russell, Whitehead, Moore and Wittgenstein, not to mention the Trinity poets (Dryden was my favourite, followed by Marvell, Byron, Tennyson
and Housman), the Trinity mathematicians (Hardy and Littlewood, and the redoubtable Ramanujan) and the Trinity physicists and physiologists.”
The “deciding moment”, however, according to him was when he learnt that Maurice Dobb was there, and Piero Sraffa and Dennis Robertson. Sen writes, “The possibility of being able to work with Dobb, Srafa and Robertson was altogether thrilling. I was so certain of my choice that not only did I apply for admission to Trinity, but I applied to no other college. In effect I decided, ‘Trinity or bust’.”
Not everyone is as sure about their choices right after school — not that it is a bad thing. Says Soumini Banerjee, a postgraduate student of linguistics at Delhi University, “Many of my peers opted for linguistics at the master’s level because it is one of the less competitive subjects offered by Delhi University.”
She continues, “They signed up for a subject they knew nothing about just to get into their dream university. Now, most of them are struggling to keep up. One year into master’s and the batch strength has gone from 40 to 23.”
Like Soumini’s batchmates, Angana Kundu also grew tired of pursuing her chosen subject — English literature. She doesn’t regret the experience though. “At Jadavpur University, where I studied, I met like-minded people who inspired my creative side,” says the 28-year-old. She recounts the workshops on comic-making, music and theatre as part of her undergraduate course. “I don’t regret those five years. The campus and its people exposed me to the possibility of a career in art,” she adds. Angana is currently a visual artist and production designer based in Mumbai.
There are others like Angana. When Sourajit Saha joined the electrical engineering department at Jadavpur University, he also joined the university photography club where he learnt the basics of video editing. He says, “Had I not joined the club, I would have never found my interest in filmmaking.” Sourajit completed his BTech and then enrolled himself at the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) in Pune for a master’s degree in video editing. At present, he is a film editor based in Calcutta.
Oftentimes, people talk about how primary training shapes the final career choice. Akshay Barwal, a 27-year-old senior tattoo artist, studied mechanical engineering. The only thing he loved more than machines was his sketchbook, but his family wanted him to study engineering given the career choices the degree yielded.
Akshay says, “Making a tattoo on the skin is a purely technical process. There is no margin for error. My familiarity with machines made it easier for me to operate tattoo machines with accuracy. I could easily gauge how much pressure I need to apply on the machine to get perfect lines on the skin.”
Your college should ideally allow you the space to intellectually and creatively grow, says Urmita Ray, an associate professor of history at Barasat Government College. “I advise students to give 70-30 weightage to degree and college, respectively,” she says. Doyeeta Majumder, an assistant professor of English at Jadavpur University, draws attention to something else. She says, “Rather than the relationship between the college and the degree, one should focus more on the relationship between the degree and the department.” She points out that there are many premier institutions where all the departments are not on a par with each other.
All said and done, there can be no one prescription.
