What qualifies to be in the Post-Graduate level?

It's been almost six months into the MS Communication course and I must say, the heat has just turned up a notch. As my good friends from class point out, "We're getting fried."

Today's special morning session, one I sorely regret for missing, was memorable indeed. A few of us decided we need a few changes made to the Saturday seminar and wrote to the Head of the Department (HOD). But our learned professor, as expected, took offense. Well as they say, 'There is no point flogging a dead horse.'

Which brings me to question myself and my friends, what is a PG course meant to be like? If we are fed each and everything that has to be done, what is the point? No doubt it's us giving the presentations, but do we have any independence in choosing what we'd like to present? Do we have the freedom to carry out our presentation the way we choose  to? Well, everyone who has read the class notice board knows the answer to that.

It's the job of our professors to maintain quality, no doubt. But should it come at the expense of inhibiting free thinking? We are assigned topics which require little research of our own, given a fixed way those points need to be presented and if we deviate, we are bad students. Now what can we conclude from this?

Regretfully I feel we too need to share this guilt. We are not willing to challenge ourselves, me included. We always want the easy way out. We accept everything given to us since we do not want to go further and risk being the 'Nerd' of the class. If a situation arises where we either have to choose between increasing the quality of our education and bring in more research for our internal assessment or just write a class test and get the same marks, I'm afraid we would choose the latter. It is no doubt, the easy way out. 

Personally, I abhor writing notes in class and class tests. It's just not something we require at this level. I do not feel spending an hour working on a presentation or an assignment out of material copied off Wikipedia is good use of my time. That was the reason I did not submit a few assignments given in the beginning in our class. 

I urge my friends to critically think of where we're headed. I'm just as disappointed with the teaching as most of you. But I'm also disappointed for not pushing myself to a level fit for a Post-Graduate course. We can easily sail through the remaining three semesters. But would we have learnt anything?