After a whole two years staying at home, I arrived at Jindal Global Law School campus on 1st March this year. As the semester comes to a close, I wanted to record my thoughts on the experience and more importantly the new lessons I learnt this time around. This was my first time staying in a residential campus, and that brings with itself a range of new challenges and experiences and some old problems.
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A note on Jindal
Caveat: Before entering into my observations about Jindal, I want to note that this is by no means a review of the college or university. I do not write about the scholastic, or extra curricular activities in this blog, or pass a value judgement on how the college is (anyway on review - Jindal is the best law school in the country right now, as student reviews and the QS rankings would tell you). These are just my observations.
Jindal is a bit strange, because of many reasons. But mostly because of two reasons. First, that it is located in a far away pocket in Sonipat surrounded by nothing but fields & a highway and, second that it is exorbitantly priced. These factors, among others make it into a very interesting place.
First, the money. Because an education here is very costly (quite justifiably for the most part in my opinion), it attracts students from the top 1% of the population. And of course there’s aberrations as well, like yours truly and so many others who are on student loans or scholarship, but for the most part the average Jindal student comes from a really rich, well to do family. Here I’d like to note that I am not making the equivalence of rich kids = spoilt kids. It might be true a lot of the times, but I don’t think it is true enough to hold as a generalization. I anyway don’t want to focus on the personal attitude bit given that it is so subjective. The thing with coming from money is that it severely distorts your view of the world, and how it works. Obviously, I don’t claim to have any sort of ‘correct’ view of the world, I’m only making the claim that the more privileged you are, the more removed you are from the difficulties and realities that plague the normal existence of most people. What that does is that first, it makes you simply unaware of many issues, and secondly, also restricts your capacity to empathize with others. It is a question as to whether expecting empathy from anyone is a rational expectation in the first place or not, but I’m arguing more in sense of understanding the problems. Privilege distorts your perspective of the struggles and reality of the 90%. And I would assume that it is a desirable quality to first, know and second, understand more of the world around you and the issues people face. To me, having these qualities make you into more of a complete person.
The conversations I’ve been a part of, or sometimes overheard at public places is of the same type. Kids talking about money (or how they would want more of it), or buying things - clothes, gadgets, widgets, and other expensive things. Initially I was repulsed by this capacity. I hated the fact that they could afford to buy the things they wanted and I couldn’t. At one point I had fallen into the trap of disliking people only because they talked a certain way about money and its disposability. As if to them, money was actually nothing more than a piece of paper - meant to be spent. At a primal level, I was jealous. But I realised that it was pointless, and more importantly it’s simply not their fault for winning the lottery of birth. People aren’t bad because they were born into privilege. People are just people.
Second, Jindal is located in a far away pocket in Sonipat surrounded by nothing but fields and a highway. And given that they re-opened after two years, they have put in strict covid protocols that don’t allow you to go out of campus. Imagine this - thousand of twenty year olds, collected in a not too big campus with nowhere to go. Just this initial condition is predictable of the outcomes it can produce.
Residential colleges
Residential colleges are a very weird place. You have thousands of twenty year old’s huddling around each other, fairly removed from normative responsibilities and monotonous chores of life. They don’t have to earn, don’t have to pay taxes, are free to experiment with their life, the cost for most of their mistakes is not too high - it’s a jolly time.
The fact that you eat, sleep, study, fight, play with the same sets of people - everything becomes more complicated that it should be. Compartmentalization becomes a myth. The same classmate you flirt with is your competitor for the class quiz, the same classmate that you almost fought with is your new team mate in a group assignment etc. Although a lot of these things can happen in a work place as well, but I would argue that college distorts these things because of the age of the students - young (read: dumb) and foolish. The naivety of youth is deceptive. It offsets the cost and risk by a margin to push you to actually make decisions than not. One way college is really different from workplace is the difference of ‘work’ or salary. In a workplace, you essentially participate in social groups because that’s the means to getting the work done. Not because that’s what you want to do. You may want to do it, but that’s not the reason why you work in X company. It is because they pay you a salary. However that’s not entirely the point in a college. In many ways, making friends and connections is as equal a priority as studying. If not a priority in actuality, it at least feels like it. In residential colleges, like Jindal - the friendship aspect of college is even more intense. You live, eat & sleep together. Everything is too tight. Your circle keeps getting smaller until you start to feel suffocated.
The issue with Jindal is also that your life becomes what happens in the boundary walls of college. Given that you don’t really have much of an option to venture out (especially now that university doesn’t allow free access), college becomes your life. I don’t think that is a healthy mechanism to structure your life. Going back to the saturation argument I made above - you tend to feel bound (literally and mentally) for the duration of the semester. You can’t see your friends, family and loved ones for extended periods of time. In my previous degree, I lived in a flat and was free to do whatever I wanted. Meet whoever I wanted, whenever I wanted. Here I am bound my residential rules and regulations. The distance between your life outside of college and inside grows. That makes you isolated. Which is why it is not uncommon to see people break up with their long distance partners and be with someone on campus. It’s easy. The difference between other residential colleges and Jindal is the distance. If you’re studying in IIT Delhi (or any other Delhi residential college), you can venture into Delhi after classes anytime you want. You can’t do this here. Going to Delhi is a task. An expensive one at that. I suppose you can transpose the same experience to any residential college that is far away from cities.
There’s an additional point I’d like to make about residential college infrastructure. I wrote a twitter thread on it sometime back which I’m reproducing here. It is basically about how the residential campuses are built in a way that makes being with your romantic partner supremely difficult, and puts you at risk. Many risks.
Learnings & outcomes
Seek and ye shall find: The one definite thing I’ve learnt is that no matter how great the college is, it is your responsibility to utilize the resources. The college does the bare minimum of making the resources and talent available to you, but it won’t serve them on a golden platter to you. You have to hustle and mobilize in order to improve your experience. What mobilization am I talking about? Building relationships with students and professors, attending seminars, lectures and events, ask for things from the university etc. (However please note that on the relationships aspect, you shouldn’t make them with the goal of getting something out of them - that dilutes the depth of the relationship. What works for me is to just be curious about something and ask questions from people. Talk to them about their work and expertise if it interests you. And if through that process you build a relationship, that’s great. If not, that’s also fine. You’ll build natural and long lasting relationships that way.
There is always more to learn from the person next to you: I met many people here that I hadn’t had the chance to interact with virtually, and interacted more intimately with people I spoke to virtually. I saw how every person has something unique to offer. A perspective, a new information, a new fact, a new recommendation - so many things. As a professor, who is now a good friend (or so I like to believe :D) said “People are fascinating”. Everyone has a story, and you learn so much from every one of them. Don’t restrict your circle. Be friendly. Meet new people and explore.
Talk to professors: This is something I preach. Please talk to your professors outside class. Because they’re older and have gone through the very same experiences as you have - talking to them and seeking their advice on things is almost a hack. The thing is that the interactions they have in class are severely restricted, it is mostly limited to teaching the material and if they venture into personal anecdotes and advices, it’s not too deep or relevant. Talk to them and ask specific questions. Seek their advice. The best professors will not only help you navigate the course, but also, life. The best conversations I’ve had this semester were with professors.
The importance of a schedule: If there’s one thing I desperately wish to incorporate in my scholastic life long term, it’s a proper schedule. Notice that I’m not saying a strict schedule. You just need to have some sort of repeatable tasks that you do each day without fail. For example. study for x amounts of hour, reading a book for x minutes or till x pages etc. Living in a residential college especially, makes your schedule unpredictable. You’re living with other people and don’t have full control over the space you occupy and consequently your day. Instilling a schedule helps you feel like you have control over your day.
Hobbies are important: Living in the conditions as I described above is not entirely a cake walk. You struggle with study, sports and emotions. Hobbies give you an escape from those. I felt really lost not being able to pursue my hobbies of reading books and playing guitar here. I somehow picked a new hobby of doodling, and its helped me cope with things. Whatever be your hobby, make sure you take time out for it and continue to do it. Anyway, it adds flavor to your life. Makes your personality multi dimensional.
Follow the regret minimization framework: One thing you don’t want to leave college with are regrets. Do things that you won’t regret not doing later in life. You see, college is that break from reality that affords you a sense of care-freeness irrespective of however much stress you are in. Live. I’m not advocating hedonism, I’m arguing that given that college is a short lived experience and gives you the opportunity to do things you won’t be able to do later in life, utilize the time. Want to play basketball for the university? Do it. Want to dedicate a semester to a hobby? Do it. Want to focus on meeting new people? Do it. Just do do do do do.
Read, read, read, read (and write): Read expansively, about anything that interests you. Talk to people about it. Write about it. Someone I really admire recently said that one advice she would give to her younger self was to read and write more. College is a time where you will still have ‘free time’. Use that at least partly for this. Read the wonders of the world, transport yourself to ancient civilizations and foreign countries, fantastical worlds and inside geopolitical tensions. But please, just read.
There are many more insights that are a bit more specific to law and Jindal that I’m leaving out here. If you’d like to talk to me about them, you know how to reach me :)
Regardless, one parting advice I’ll leave you all with is chase joy. The thing I was missing (still am in many senses) when I was the most down this semester was joy. I used to complain to my peers that there is no joy left in attending classes or reading for them. As I’ve learnt, almost all good things in life are a byproduct of chasing joy, which may translate to chasing curiosity for many people, since chasing curiosity gives joy. The thing with chasing joy is that you have to cultivate it for the most part. Do things that give you joy. Break the pattern. For me, it was talking to people I like, spending time in the library, scrolling through interesting books, learning about things that I find interesting and playing basketball. The mundane of life gets to you very quickly. You need to cultivate joy. Seek joy. Without joy, you won’t be able to do things you want to.
If you’re feeling generous, you can buy me a coffee.