Monday 9 May 2011

Rationale singularity

I miss being a student. It's barely a year since I last was a student and I miss that feeling of having something to occupy the mind with. While it is true that I love to let my mind wander free, pick up something strange and follow a train of thought, it was easier to do this when I was a student. Intriguing things intrigued me and there just seemed to be a lot more things to be intrigued about back then.

Work is good for me. I know I can put in more effort and do a much better job of what I am currently doing, but I don't want to. It'd easily let my boss typify me into a role I've been forced to undertake due to circumstances in office. As all those management books seem to suggest, success in work is all about grabbing certain opportunities and letting go of some. I'm letting go of this because I've seen (in the form of my colleagues) where this will eventually lead me and I don't quite like that scenario. So as of now, I'm happy just ambling along, going with the flow, not paddling on my own and letting the current take me.

For the past 8 months or so, since I've started on this job, a typical Sunday evening for me is usually spent wondering about the frantic Sunday evenings I spent whilst in J school. It was either finishing assignments in a hurry or making pages or attempting to brainstorm with Rachit when originally watching Scrubs or going into one of our typically long drawn conversations. I miss those Sundays badly.

It's not that I was a bright student. I was the opposite of every fibre of that word. I was average while in school. A tad above average in college and for reasons still incomprehensible, a bit good even, when in J school. I don't know when my habit of looking things up happened, but it just did. I recently had quite a long discussion about Entropy with my brother (basically a geek on physics per se) and I could see how surprised and even marginally proud he was when he realised that I knew a bit about the concept.

My lack of math skills have left me in deep shit at times. That has in some way, acted as an impediment for me to learn Physics, which is, ironically, my favourite of sciences. As I'm sure everybody knows, math and physics speak a common language. Understanding one is necessary to fully understand the other. I could never wrap my head around even the simplest of math. But understanding some concepts of physics in a non-academic way doesn't need math, like the concepts of aerodynamics or waves or light or thermodynamics or entropy.

Anyway, I digress. I need something to keep my mind active. Student life and probably the people it brought along did that for me until a year ago. I want that back. Not a wishful time machine to rewind to that exact phase or a Groundhog Day scenario, but even a shade of that phase would do.

Something to keep my mind engaged on something, or someone on someone.