Learn to dream

This post is inspired by (and in comment to) Abhaga’s great post: [[http://abhaga.blogspot.com/2005/08/to-bend-and-not-to-fold.html|To bend and not to fold]].

I have often wondered, what makes a great school great? How is it, that over and again, we see that certain places manage to inspire and produce generations of outstanding thinkers and artists and scientists.
The Stanfords, the Berkeleys, the MITs, and of course, the IITs.

Abhaga astutely observes that experiences such as living in a hostel don’t make a place unique. Irrespective of where you live, 4 years of hostel live will definitely teach you a lot about people, the world around you, the realities and the brutalities, the goodness and the selfishness. You will grow as a person, understand your responsibilities, learn to make your own decisions, make mistakes, learn from them (or not). Hostel life prepares you for the real world.

But these places have something more. They teach you to dream. Rather, they teach you to //learn to dream//. I’m neither as emotional or articulate as Abhaga was when writing his post, so this probably doesn’t sound that eloquent :-) But the point I’m trying to make is, the actual education is not in the text books and the assignments. Somewhere in those hall ways and libraries and great halls and quads, we get inspired, and learn to live and pursue our dreams.

I think the inspiration factor is key here. Inspiration can come from many places. Roaming in the lawns at Stanford, among those old-architecture buildings, I could easily imagine how people could get inspired simply by their surroundings. The rolling hills, the lush green grass, the tower and the status. Or if you are sitting around with your friends around a fountain in the cobbled courtyards of Princeton. Atleast to me, it seems sometimes just the //natural beauty// is enough to inspire.

Then of course there’s the rich history factor.

Another important thing IMHO is //tradition// — be it the hall 2 vs. hall 3 rivalry of IITK (which sadly, is not anymore… or is it?) or the MIT hacks — traditions both grand and silly, serve to bind the whole place by an invisible threads. Even if you meet a 10 years senior from IITK or a 10 years junior whom you’ve never met — you can always talk about the buildings and the mess and the faculty and the freshers and the ragging. Traditions make you feel that you //belong//.

Sometimes I feel we are in a constant battle to defeat our past, to live up to the expectations of these institutions that we so proudly associate with.

Of course, all of these places were not always great — I mean they all had a beginning right? But they all built a //critical mass// of good students and faculty, that gave them the foundation, on which they built upon and spawned forth. And its not that all the places are consistently great. Everyone has their lean period. But the sheer momentum of the past sometimes burgeones us into the future.

Ah, those days.