Backbenchers

A young couple of boy and girl have long sweet dreams after getting married. Honeymoon gets over as soon as they have a baby. The tussle to tutor the toddler from the very tender age keeps them on tenterhooks. They start bombarding the young mind with alphabets, birds and animal pictures, nursery rhymes etc to face the interview for admission to the best school in town at kindergarten level. After the admission, they always desire their kids to be seated in front rows of the class. Since all can’t be seated in front rows, the teacher keeps them rotating at regular intervals. No parent wants his child to become backbencher. But the big question is, do all the backbenchers end up as failures in life? Let us try to dig deep.

Once they reach higher classes, several groups of students of common mindset evolve. One group likes to be seated in front rows. Another group is little shy, and wants to settle in the middle part. And then we have some students who wish to have their own life even when the teacher is very seriously taking the class. These last row sitting students are busy discussing movies seen previous day, or the soccer match between Arsenal & Liverpool, or planning something nasty to perturb the teacher, or hatching a conspiracy to teach a lesson to the front row sitting topper student.

After leaving the school and entering a college or university, these backbencher students develop into boss or leaders. Even some of the front benchers, who were good at studies under strict control of their parents, become backbenchers after reaching hostels. These backbenchers enter from back door of the class and love to exit from same gate at their will and wish. They form group of like minded rascals and plan to disturb the class, bunk the class en-mass, arrange demonstrations, shut the door of hostel bathroom from outside when someone is inside getting late for the class. Some of them are even looking out to pick fights with others and prefer to flash knives or if possible pistols to portray a macho image. They don’t like studies, neither do they like others to study.

Let me narrate some of the pranks of my college days. We were at the ground floor and our one year senior batch of Engg College was housed on the upper floor of hostel. It was around 01 am midnight. The light of one room on upper floor was lit as the student was merged in deep studies. Our group of henchmen didn’t tolerate this. One friend soaked white chalk and pasted on his forearm. Then he fixed some thin wood chips on the fingers as long nails. He colored some part of his white forearm and long nails with red paint to look like blood. He climbed the concreted shade of his window to reach out to the upper window which was flung wide open. With a loud shout he banged his forearm on the book that the senior was studying. In great horror and fear that senior student rose up, cried and ran to reach out to the exit-door of his room. In an attempt to cover just few feet, he fell twice.

They approach the toppers for the syllabus when exams are round the corner. Some of them even try to connect with the professors who did set the exam papers and/or expected to check the answer sheets. Few of them become sincere only during the exams and study only the few important topics. Some indulge in preparing chits. Some even form groups to observe demonstration for postponing the exam date. Few do visit temples and churches to please God.

Like that the time flies and four year period of engineering course comes to its final phase (let me take the case of engg). Companies from the corporate world come to recruit students through campus placement. Mostly the toppers get placed first but not necessarily so. The job placement criterion for each company is different. Some test your course knowledge but some check only the general aptitude. Now onwards the career life starts. What one achieves in this career life depicts one’s success story. That entire long struggle from the time of Kindergarten school to the last day in college was primarily aimed at achieving a successful career.

Less than 25% of engg students get a career of their core branch. That means if he has studied electrical or civil engg, he joins a firm engaged in doing business in the fields of electrical or civil engg. Even for these core students, not more than 5 or 10% of what they studied in engg course comes to help in the job career. For Electronics Telecommunications and Computer science branches, the advancement is so fast that whatever one studies today becomes obsolete tomorrow after couple of years.

Remaining 75% students don’t join their core companies. They either go to IT field where jobs are enormous employing civil mechanical any branch, or financial firms, or administrative & management with or without MBA, or consulting company, and so on and so forth. All this boils down to give a very nasty conclusion. Why did we all burn midnight oil to study so hard, when nothing much of what we studied is utilized in career life? Why did our parents run from post to pillar to give us the best possible education in top of the town school?

So we have concluded successfully that hardly anything that we studied all through our lives is of much help in our job career. What matters is ones administrative and management capability, the power to convince others, the ability to dominate the proceedings in a meeting, the leadership qualities, over and above all – the common sense, which is actually not so common. As and when the time passes and one climbs the career ladder, the job requirement becomes more and more administrative and managerial. The job of a successful manager is not to do the job, but to get the job done by others. He has to build social network to grab the business. After bringing business he has to then find resources, man or machinery, to accomplish the work. At this point, that very successful brilliant scholar student bagging close to 100% marks may or may not succeed. But the other nasty vagabond of college backbencher having dominating capability is poised to shine. He was driving the group of students, bossing over them, leading a procession, arguing with professors and principal. He is also likely to have wider social networking and the flair to expand it more.

While reaching close to four decades of post student career life, when I seriously take a close look at the current status and achievements of all my engg college friends, shocking revelations emerge. Many backbenchers and not so good students of those campus days have overtaken the toppers. Some of them are heading companies as CEOs and even commanding those toppers. Some of the toppers went out for higher studies. After achieving higher qualifications like M.Tech or PhD, they found the career doors of corporate and industry closed for them. They were declared over-qualified for the job. The only option left for them was to go for R&D or teaching. In developing nations, R&D doesn’t have much scope and salary. And the teaching faculty has mix of talent. It has either very talented toppers who missed the corporate bus in the zeal of higher studies, or those who could not find a job in the industry and finally settled for teaching. Off-course there are, but very few, who were really interested in making ‘teaching’ as their career from the beginning.

Today when we visit our alma-mater, the old professors who taught us remember the backbenchers more than the toppers, “Oh, you are that nasty fellow who created unrest and institute was closed for a week”. Another remark may come like,” You are Rajesh who set ablaze the sports room in protest”?  While organizing get-together of batchmate alumni, I find these backbenchers taking deep interest. They are the ones who volunteer to host such gatherings. They are also more active on social platforms like facebook and whatsapp groups. Due to them being more active, happy, agile, smiling, laughing, trying to live every moment of life, they are found to live longer.

So dear parents; don’t lose heart if your kid is not the front bencher and not the topper. The world doesn’t end here.