Atma Gyan

Economics is the study of the problems of choice. And our courses make sure we have enough practice understanding that – we have to choose between sleeping at the hostel and completing assignments the Ctrl+C way, or burning the midnight oil and sleeping in lectures with the teacher standing right over our heads.

A graduate fresh from my engineering days, I am not used to sitting in lectures longer than 40 minutes. But here, the professors’ first impression ensures that none of the class will even dream of saying “Bas, please, Sir” anytime during the lecture. In fact, professors frequently exceed the one-and-a-half hour limit, sans any objection from the students.

Add to that the lovely monologues that some professors are prone to breaking into. One abrupt transition, from microeconomic theory, to the merits of a value system, woke up this daredevil sleeper. I had lost track of whatever was going on in class, somewhere during the professor’s speech on market value and economic profit, when I suddenly heard something about alcohol and vices. The professor was now asking “Why would you want to drink something that makes you less human?”. He even ventured into spirituality, happiness, and how to live a peaceful, complete life – one that involved shopping on Saturdays and relaxing in front of the TV on Sundays. I was instantly awake and nodding vigorously. How long had I been sleeping? And was this a dream?

One incident, though, was not a dream. Another daredevil first-bench sleeper had been dozing off every now and then for all but the last 10 minutes of the class. At the end of the class, the professor finally pauses his monologue and asks a question. Half-asleep, the student answers, and gets vehement praise. The professor praises the conflict in his mind, his thinking prowess, little aware that the conflict is nothing but a characteristic of the transition the lucky fellow’s brain was making from a soporific state to a semi-awake one. He even goes to the extent of saying that this guy will go very far in life. The rest of the class could do nothing but look on.

Life has begun thus at MDI – though it is still in its infancy. Where professors care for learning, and employ pedagogies from quizzes to monologues to interactions to cases to games. Where students value the importance of those few hours of sleep, and curse the comfortable AC rooms for inducing stupor, at the same time thanking them for protection from sultry Gurgaon. And where life actually lives.