Wednesday, July 26 Poly Sci Orientation

I woke up and was bussed to the Political Science department in the pouring rain, along with twenty other students. The college is off Mall Road, and students could be seen walking around or taking bicycle rickshaws. The main street on campus is a long two-way road leading in from Mall Road. The political science department shares a building with the history department. We went in a small room, and there were not enough chairs so they had to bring in one for me, which they were literally going to position in the middle of the circle of all of us, it was hilarious. The heads of the department explained how the classes work. Sometimes it was hard to understand their Indian accents, which will suck to have to deal with. It’s like having your barely-comprehendible Indian Engineering TA teach you. Apparently it’s a yearlong curriculum, so instead of the huge year-end exam, we would be writing a 25-page research paper. Fun. We were in the Master’s degree program, so it’s a two-year program with the first year including introductory survey courses, and the second year including electives. I will be taking the electives because they sound more interesting. Plus, we only have to take two classes, plus Hindi which is flexible. So, if I take electives, I can go to class only Tuesday and Thursday from 9 to 1. That leaves me with a perfect Friday-Monday four-day weekend, ideal for travel/slacking off. Apparently they don’t do registration here. We just GO to the classes we want and fill out a form to get credit, later. No online registration or anything. And you can sign up for any class you want. It’s pretty strange but that’s India. What’s also weird about India is the fact that outside the department office were lists posted. There were three lists, one for ‘General Category’, one for ‘Backward Caste Reservation’, and one for ‘Tribals Reservation’. The latter two lists were on a board on the ground, while the ‘General Category’ list was in the glass casing on the wall. What else was interesting about the lists was that it listed all the students’ names in order of how well they ranked with each other; no grades, just an “I’m better than her, who’s better than him” system. Talk about reinforcing hierarchy rather than creating reservations to foster inclusivity. The rest of the day was spent eating, taking three-hour-long naps, eating again, and reading my book. We also determined who would room with who for the next six months. And it’s not just rooming, it’s well….sleeping in the same bed! So we had to find a fair way to go about it. I volunteered to room with Nikhil. So I explained it was because I was a “light sleeper” (even though I could fall asleep in the front row of a Metallica concert, but whatever). Nikhil moved in today, which is weird because we have free food here and I wouldn’t want to stay there all alone the first night.