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Journalism of Courage
— Rajendra K Ray
IITs are long been considered as the best technical institutes in India, which offer prestigious placements and high salary packages after graduation. This makes the IIT entrance tests (JEE Main and JEE Advanced) one of the toughest entrance examinations in India where over a million aspirants try their luck every year. Therefore, these exams need hard work, well-planned preparation, and the ability to handle enormous mental pressure. Those who are able to balance this out, cracks the JEE Advanced and secure a seat at an IIT.
The next big knot is to get the best branch in the best IITs. Nowadays, students are more interested in branches like Computer science, Data Science, Electrical Engineering, or related areas for high salary packages.
This is mainly due to the inputs from family and friends, which might not be helpful for them. Many of you may be fervent about other engineering branches, but due to gigantic expectations from your parents and other family members, they are forced to opt for these branches. This will cause some type of mental uproar throughout your graduation period, which may disturb their academic performance.
On the other hand, those of you who are forced to take other engineering branches due to the lower ranking in the IIT entrance exam shall enter into a rat race of branch change options in individual IIT. I have seen that in their first two semesters, students are under gigantic mental pressure to get better grades than their batchmates so that they can utilise the branch change opportunity and get their desired branches.
All these unhealthy competitions put enormous stress on the students, which gradually develops mental health issues among many of them, the best young minds of our country.
As a senior faculty member at IIT Mandi and regular interaction with the students, I found that this mental health issue has grown exponentially among IIT students in recent years.
So, all IITs are trying to handle this issue very seriously by developing strong counselling cells and mental health units, yoga and meditation centres, etc along with forming different internal committees for continuous monitoring of the students.
At IIT Mandi, we have a strong hiking and trekking club and mountain biking club. As a former faculty-in-charge of these clubs, I conducted frequent hiking and trekking events for the students, especially for the first-year students, and I found that these activities brought wonderful positive energy among the students which helped them to overcome mental stress. Also, the location and weather at IIT Mandi play an important role in bringing lots of positive energies and peace of mind among the students. This may be the reason that we have not seen any serious mental health issues among our students.
In conclusion, I want to say that prevention is better than cure. If you don’t put yourself in harmful race, you should be able to handle your mental stress efficiently during the JEE or during your graduation in an IIT.
You must believe that IIT admission is not only the goal of your life.
It is fine if you get a chance in an IIT, but if not, then don’t worry. If you are passionate about engineering study, any good engineering college can accomplish your dream. Don’t make a conclusion about your academic achievements just after the completion of your graduation, you should take a longer time for this.
I strongly believe that, if you’re ardent about your engineering study, serious about the academic curriculum, and do hard work, nobody can stop you from excelling.
(The writer is a professor at the School of Mathematical & Statistical Sciences, and Chairperson, JEE Cell at IIT Mandi)
(A Lesson from IIT is a weekly column by an IIT faculty member on learning, science and technology on campus and beyond. The column appears every Friday)
