A Delicate Cohesion

Collect a bunch of ants and put them in an entirely new environment. Immediately they explore and adapt to their different and challenging surroundings and gradually move to their objective of gathering food and returning to their colony by following the pheromone.

Now, gather a bunch of students and put them on one project. Analogous to ants the students should explore and adapt to the various panoramas of each other and eventually visualize a common goal to effectively achieve it as one cohesive group which sadly isn’t true.

Very commonly we are by default considered to be functioning like ants. Instead of being individually judged, a mass of us are judged in a group and each individual in turn is expected to reach out for an equivalent position. Though studying under the same theme, each student has his own bucket of thoughts and packet of actions. When two persons with different buckets are brought together they try to minimize the conflicts in their ideas. Imagine if four or more different buckets were spilled together then instead of creating a new bucket, an excessively useless new mixture of failure would be formed.

One must argue that this is not always true. In a project if all aspects are not explored the project may have some shortcomings. But if all these aspects are brought together at the same time then the project would be a total mess. This is exactly what has been happening with me and my projects. I am made to work with people having various interests and no matter how hard I try to push my interest, the project always ends up being something which is a convergence of the ideas of all the members.



I sit back and think had I worked with people matching my interests I may have been able to reach my ultimate goal and not something much more condensed. In a restricted environment where the administration has its own set of fancy rules trying their level best to suppress and torture each and every student this kind of cohesion is almost impossible. Instead of being given the freedom of innovating and producing quality ideas, our new born ideas are given no heed and are buried even before they get a voice.

I ask why? Why are we not encouraged to produce new results. Why are we made to work on previous results. I don’t want to do what’s already been done. I want new ideas to float all over and maybe create something which I can be proud of. I just hope that this delicate cohesion is no longer continued and maybe someday we will see people following their dreams and not killing them.