Back Being A Virtual Back-bencher

For some strange reason, I had deluded myself into believing that my epoch-making statement would be received with euphoric excitement by my audience of `one' - my dear wife.  But it turned out to be the dampest of squibs and she betrayed no visible signs - of either euphoria or excitement.  You see, for decades she valiantly tried to nudge me into upgrading myself academically and professionally by getting a good MBA, but I got nowhere with that.  It turned out to be one more front on which yours truly failed her.  There was this complete absence of motivation in me for, nay well-nurtured antipathy towards, anything that smacked of further structured academic effort. This thorny issue remained a constant source of chagrin for her.  So, when I recently declared breezily, `I am a Harvard Alumnus now', she just glowered at me menacingly, with all the cumulative disdain she could muster.  Forced into providing a meaningful explanation, I went on to clarify that I just completed an online course of Harvard (available for free, of course) on the subject of 'Humanitarian Response To Conflicts And Disasters'. A rather impressive choice, any impartial bystander would agree.

Retired people who have managed their egos well in life would readily agree that the impact of the pandemic on their daily lives has not been anything phenomenal.  Because most retired people were home-bound anyway with some routine outings for airing themselves.  Some friends have snidely confided in me that the virus has just reinforced the well-entrenched dictum of most retirees' wives that retired males are meant for home, pottering around aimlessly for hours.  The splendid rationale is that such people had whiled away their working days outside home, so now is the opportunity to make up.  Whatever it is, I found that I had some more disposable time on hand, out of the total highly disposable time in a day and had to explore something to avoid being bored. When I chanced upon this website offering free online courses from various global universities, I fell hook, line and sinker and took the bait.  Why did this commendable effort not impress my dear wife??  Because it was not real Harvard,  there was no competitive jostle to get admission and it was free for any walk-in!!  Doesn't cut it with academicians like her, with very high standards.

 

The earliest realisation I had was that I had no patience for the video presentations of the professors and practitioners teaching the course.  They seemed to take forever to say what they wanted to.  Anyway, my preference for the written word over the spoken one was very clearly established historically. People look at me as if I have sprouted a few horns when I honestly confess that I enjoy reading Shakespeare's plays more than going to the theatre to watch them enacted. This may have something to do with the terrible acting, rotten acoustics and the worst possible ambience one had to suffer during most of the shows of my early days.  So, I found it far easier to read the transcript of the course presentations (which was displayed alongside the videos very obligingly) and understood them better, in half the time of the videos. My dear wife mumbled in response, `once a weirdo always a weirdo'!  Well, teachers justifiably would want the first go at the students to explain the stuff before the latter can resort to independent knowledge gathering from other material.  But, given my penchant, I throttled the voice of the presenter by muting and read the stuff. If you are fast with reading, you don't have to be impeded by the slower pace of the presenters. Also, you don't have to lose the thread or content because the presenter's diction or delivery is not in tune. Anyway, with due respect to the professors in the videos, it is not Vyasa or Valmiki or Homer presenting; nor was I  following Mahabharat or Ramayana or Iliad. There was no halo around the canopy of any presenter to dazzle, you see!  So, I kept to reading instead of listening and was none the worse off.

When the online system frequently insisted I provide comments on the segment completed, I felt like the veritable back-bencher of yore in college, nursing simmering discontent about the rigmarole of the examination routine.  That, mingled with mild pique at being forced to take a test to prove you have grasped stuff. When I complied with the diktat, my views were dictated by barely concealed cynicism towards organizations which were established with the noble objective of protecting the innocents and vulnerable from marauding warlords, but have consistently failed abjectly for decades. Also by the disenchantment with many of the NGOs which tend to gobble up big chunks of the contributions/funds received for administrative expenses and spend the remaining pittance inefficiently for the needy.   Consequently the tone of my comments varied from being critical to caustic from a pragmatic perspective, while recognizing the fact that all the aid organizations were involved in discharging an unenviable duty to tend to the millions of refugees from all the conflicts around the globe.  A very tough ask, indeed.    

The course did also give one a great insight into the functioning of governments of the countries involved in sectarian wars, disasters and self inflicted conflicts when it comes to management of the aid funds.  Especially, the irony of the perpetrators of all the violence and inequities as well as the originators of all the problems of the refugees being given a central role in the distribution of the aid!!  And a peek into the role of the volunteer aid organizations, which always seem to lack expertise and become the training ground for novices. A clear case of too little being done too late, but without these interlopers, even the tiny bit of good being achieved would be lost.

There were a few social media troll-types among the students, who harboured extreme opinions on various inputs from co-participants.  They pounced on a solitary word, even if they were stripping it out of context, and went at the source hammer and tongs belligerently.  For instance there was this chap who must have been an army veteran of sorts and took umbrage at any statement against any army unit, indulging in malpractices in the management of aid funds.  To him it didn't matter what army it was, even a sectarian warlord's bunch of thugs, and he bristled as if his own colleagues were vilified.  The whole thing was just amusing for its lack of maturity and balance.

Because the whole exercise was informal all the way and nothing serious was at stake (for me, I mean), there was no compelling urge for one to master everything.  It was easy to move quickly from one section to the other, without the need for completely absorbing minute facts and figures, so long as one digested the key material.  Result, a ten-week course got completed in four and the teacher at home was not amused, when she heard that. She looked at me as if I were an erring infantile and tried to make me go back and do the `entire' course again, despite my swearing I had done that. I had to prove myself by answering a few questions and did feel like a kid, in the process.

This type of learning is like any quiz. The early exercises are easy enough and keep your ego in tact and expectations inflated. Then they throw all the curved balls at you and try to take you apart with the tough ones, exposing your lack of understanding of the subject and preparedness.  But such progress is par for any course and should not deter the determined ones. So I am soldiering on. The next course I have enrolled in is about Responsive Cities.  Very soon I realized how far out of my depth I was. I was bamboozled in the third week by an exercise meant to redesign a sea-front area as a mixed use residential, commercial, official, cultural and entertainment centre.  With all the permutations and combinations possible, it was a load of fun, but I had huge difficulty in moving the pieces around for lack of proficiency with such things.  

Having completed that redesign, I am not even interested in finding out how good the outcome was in relation to the rest of the class. Why go for self-inflicted wounds?  I do have a good excuse, I am not an architect or engineer, so mine was dictated by common sense.  And common sense is bound to fail!