The one on the Exchange Program

The following is meant to be published in the institute magazine : The Fourth Estate. I have to thank these boys for helping me rediscover my love for writing. It is a little long for a blog post, but then I am writing after a long time, so I am allowed to rant :


They say IIT is the land of infinite opportunities, whether they cater to your technical, cultural or even in some cases political interests. There was once a time when IIT was considered the necessary evil between JEE and GRE – a ticket to a land of greater opportunities; a one-way journey of exploring life beyond the motherland. The only drawback one can think of is the nature of a grad-student’s life(Ph.D comics is the inspiration) : All work and no play . Then, as time progressed, came along the concept of summer internships which can be loosely described as some work and some play .It was thus, only a matter of time before the arrival of no work and all play – perhaps the best summary possible of life as an exchange student.


I think it was November last year when I was informed of my selection into a unique program, very seductively titled “Leadership Enrichment and Regional Networking” (LEaRN)– an opportunity to spend one academic semester at Nanyang Technological University(NTU), Singapore or the National University of Singapore(NUS). Participants were chosen from various south-east Asian nations including Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia, Korea(South of course), China, Thailand, Brunei and Incredible Ind-yeah, some of whom have now become good friends.
It is very difficult to give an account of everything we did over the past few months but here’s my attempt:

Chapter 1 – Arrival

I arrived at Singapore, as part of a group of Indian students from IIT Madras. The initial few days were spent in extending niceties to our hosts(NTU), our sponsors(the Temasek Foundation of Singapore) and with our co-LEaRNers. It took us decent time to familiarize ourselves with Singaporean customs and the infamous Singlish( For the beginner ,‘can’ is the loose equivalent of ‘da’ – a word used in every sentence). For an Indian, Singaporean efficiency and discipline can be both surprising as well as irritating at times. I hereby present two case studies:

Numero Uno- The transport buses in Singapore actually stop at every zebra crossing for the pedestrians to cross. I doubt whether a Singaporean would last two seconds on Indian roads.

Numero Duex- I had a small problem regarding some of my courses initially. So, I did what every sane IITian would do – I went to the academic block. Yet, even though the manager’s vettiness was blatantly obvious, I was refused an appointment to meet her. “Please send email”. Standard protocol - Something which should have been over in 5 minutes took 2 days!

However, these are just two rotten apples in a bunch of good ones. It is thanks to this devotion to discipline that Singapore is one of the strongest financial centers in the world- Size does not matter!

The NTU campus itself is quite beautiful with lots of greenery , concrete and mini-skirts and is a good rival for insti. The one thing which might sway the vote in NTU’s favor is the McDonalds inside campus.

Chapter 2 – Wanderlust

Singapore is a backpacker’s worst nightmare. There is nothing there except buildings – damn beautiful ones but you tend to get bored of them pretty soon. It is an ideal place for a one week vacation, but not a day more. Among the sights to catch at Singapore is the world famous Night Safari – a nocturnal romp through wild animals in their artificially created natural habitats, Sentosa – an island based theme resort and any other place where you can get drink and company.

Singapore provides the ideal platform to visit neighboring South-East Asian countries. Flights are reasonably cheap and so are the living expenses. Our scholarship was sufficient to cover Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and Cambodia.

We started off with a two day stay at Kuala Lumpur. It’s a nice city, similar to Singapore in a few aspects, yet totally different. The Petronas twin towers provided us with numerous opportunities to test our mettle in digital photography and obtain good display pictures for our Facebook/Orkut profile.

Thailand was a different experience all together and no amount of words can do justice to the time we had and the experiences we enjoyed. Thailand was a first for us in a lot of new things like para-sailing, snorkeling and even street dances!. The beautiful islands of Koh phi phi(watch the movie The Beach) provided the much needed relief from a daily routine. Phuket was the perfect holiday destination in the sense that on one hand it provided us with numerous scenic beaches and on the other hand, it was the best place to party!

Chapter 3 – Acads and other stuff

“Life in Singapore is peace”- official Indian sound bite in the LEaRN scrapbook. The good thing about the acads there is the wide variety of courses on offer. Personally, it was a very enriching experience as I got an opportunity to try out a lot of courses which would have been impossible to pursue at IIT- both core and non-core.

Technology is optimally used to serve the students needs with video lectures, course documents, tutorials, etc uploaded at the beginning of the semester itself. This is where I feel the system fails sometimes. By providing all the references at the very beginning, the system is snatching away the incentive for the student to attend regular lectures. This was true for most of my courses, where I found that the number of students writing the final exams was significantly higher than those who attended classes (not that I attended many thanks to zero attendance rules).

The concept of blackboard teaching is hardly in use here and is something which should be strictly reinforced by the administration. No amount of video lectures or power point presentations is substitute for “black-board teaching” .This enhances the teacher-student interaction as the student feels that the professor is actually teaching ex-tempore and not just merely reading from the slides.

I think I have covered enough. I will conclude with a brief FAQ:

1) How do I apply for this wonderful life experience?
Smail followed by numerous trips to department and acad block.

2) Is the scholarship sufficient?
More than sufficient. I know of some people who actually saved money.

3) What about my grades in Singapore?
All the credits will be transferred. As far as CGPA goes, it’s zero-credits.

4) Will it look good on my resume/ Will it help in job prospects?
Don’t know, don’t care.