NED, Indus Valley and The Great Divide (Part 1)

One of the great (or terrible, depending on how you look at it) things about being in an engineering university is that you're surrounded by like-minded individuals. Everyone's interested in Math and solving homogeneous differential equations, arguing whether 1st order differential equations are easier than 2nd order (2nd order wins hands down, man). It seems like we're forever talking circuits, resistors, micro-controllers and assembly language and how our NERC projects are getting on. That's all you ever hear about. And the funny thing is, you don't even realize how deep you've been sucked into the engineering whirlpool until you meet up with your old school friends only to find out that you're definitely not on the same page anymore, hell, you might as well be in different books. 

That's what it felt like when I met two of my friends from school, who're currently doing Architecture Engineering from Indus Valley School of Arts and Architecture. We'd all studied the same subjects back in A levels; engineering subjects at that. But that day, when we met for lunch, I felt whatever conversation I had to offer wasn't good enough. Because, really, who wants to hear about how capacitors and inductors are charge storage elements? Unfortunately capacitors and inductors happened to be foremost in my thoughts that day, what, with exams just a couple of weeks away, and the shitload of work I had to submit.

(Note: I really don't understand WHY it works this way; the closer exams get, the tighter your university squeezes you, so that you suddenly find you've got a couple of assignment deadlines coming up, a few projects to hand over and five tests to study for in the last week of semester.)

It isn't that I had trouble connecting with them, or that I found their conversation uninteresting (far from it), and it isn't like I was caught in a socially awkward situation too painful to live through. I had a great time, believe me. I think, mainly, I was just surprised at how different talking to them was compared to talking to my other friends. I was surprised to discover that there were people out there who didn't give a damn about matrix algebra and BJT current sources, people who had no interest, whatsoever, in raw engineering. And I was surprised at myself for forgetting that in the first place.

While waiting for our order, my friends discussed the restaurant's interior décor, they passed judgments on the framed pictures positioned at intervals along the wall, they debated the location of a pillar situated behind my seat, and all this was intriguing to watch for me and another friend, who also happens to be studying engineering. And they had so many stories to tell about their university. The quirky teachers, each one with a more eccentric personality than the last, the Indus Valley crowd itself (because everyone in Karachi thinks nobody cleans up the way these guys do), and all the social problems that arise from hanging out with the classiest people in the city (I'm thinking GOSSIP GIRL!!). A boring engineering university and the experiences it's got to offer pales in comparison, you can imagine.