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Tuesday, March 1, 2011

No Rest

My mid-semester exams got over last week (on Thursday). On Friday I had a Machine Learning class, on Saturday I had to correct exam papers for the DSA course I am a TA of, on Sunday I had to do the reviews for Technical Writing and code the first deliverable for the Information Retrieval project. And now some work or the other is arriving in a steady line.

Once upon a time, I used to long for work. I remember working all the time in the summers and winters on some project or the other. And somehow, I never felt it was tedious. I guess it was because I really loved to do it. In that sense, it was not work but fun. Most people I know spent their vacations having fun too. But yeah, their definition of fun was different from mine. For me fun meant working as many hours a day as possible in front of a computer screen and trying to solve some research problem in computer science.

That was then. Somehow the situation is different now. It seems there is too much work everyday. I don't find time to do anything other than coursework. I spend a lot of time trying to optimize time usage, but sadly nothing works. I regularly stay awake late nights to work and consequently fall asleep during the class (and by that, I mean when a lecture is going on). Concentration in class is at an all time low. And all this results in me struggling to understand concepts taught in class. And add to this the extra TA duties I have to perform.

Is handling so much work going to help? What good will it do ultimately? I have always desired to do something new and innovative. But I'm afraid this workload is gradually pushing out this desire from me. If all the time is spent on coursework, it leaves no time to pursue one's interests. How can we even think of innovation then? Yet sadly, this is what seems to be happening. In fact I feel as if I am losing interest in computer science as a whole.

I don't want to lose my faith in the system. I still remember the words "If you can't respect the system which you are a part of, how can you respect yourself?". But it is not really about respecting or not respecting. It is more about "can we make it better? can we have some change?"

Yes we can! Yes we can! Yes we can!
And I sincerely believe in it.

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