Are you gold?

This is an article I wrote for our internal newsletter, sharing here for wider audience who are working as professionals.

 
These days, we hear news of gold hitting all time high almost on daily basis. It is not just now, whenever times have been tough in the modern history, gold has become more valuable.

Let's look at what makes this yellow metal so precious:
1. Gold Shines
2. Gold works great as investment even in worst of times
3. Gold is valuable in all its uses

I think we should imbibe these qualities in ourselves as professionals.

The most important quality we identify gold with, is its shine. Anytime we see a gold item that's not shining we have doubts on its quality. How do we shine as professionals? We shine though our communication and compassion in our jobs. We are extremely lucky to be working in an organization where, looking at our trainees, compassion will be an automatic reaction. We want to set high standards not just for them but also for our colleagues with top quality communication. We must shine in every action we do at work.

In our professional life we will come across tough times. Those who perform consistently will become more valuable members of the team. This is time to work harder and smarter to get to our goals. Always remember, rewards are much higher when performance is good in difficult times.

Gold is valuable in every form be it bullion, investment or jewellery. The more it is diluted, the more importance it gets, think of diamond jewellery, it is never made from pure gold but is valued more than pure gold jewellery. With the kind of growth we have seen, and we will continue to see, it will be required for all of us to take on different roles across organization and locations. We should make sure that we are doing the best we can; in every task we are assigned. Remember it is the Gold that valued not the item that gold is made into.

Quoting from "A Tale of two Cities" by Charles Dickens, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way" - in short, the period was so far like the present period.

This is the time you should ask yourself, every day you come to work, "Are you gold?" I do.

A "social" solution to suicides in IITs

"IIT-Kanpur: Eight cases of suicide in 5 yrs"

This is not a news that any alumni would be proud of. Though it has been a case of at least 1 suicide per year @ IIT K. May be now it is more than before, or same and we feel its more because the news spreads faster in the world.But this definitely is a problem that needs to be looked into.

A very very good solution in my view is described below, in the words of Dr. Ashok Gupta:

I would like to share with you a modest attempt to prevent suicides on IITK Campus that we recently launched. Students at IITK have been very appreciative of this effort. Let me briefly describe it.
We have set up a Blog "Go For It..." Every month we will publish story of an alumni who struggled as student at IIT but is now doing well in life and career. We will also publish stories of alumni who chose to follow their dream and are doing what their heart desires, especially pursuing a non-traditional career path. The link to these stories are shared with students at IITK (through student Gymkhana) and posted on various Facebook pages that students and alumni visit.
The two stories currently on the Blog have exceeded our expectations. We have had more than 23,000 views. Comments on these stories have been made by not just IITK students and faculty but also by IITD, IITB, IITkgp and even non-IIT readers. Readers have engaged with featured alumni.

My take on the situation and possible solutions:

Can counselling parents help? 

I would be interested to know the background of parents in these cases and see if we can coach the parents at all. I distinctly recall, in my stay, we had one case of suicide in hall-2 and I clearly remember his parents profession and their total monthly income could have been about 3-4k, both working day in and out. (Compared to that my own monthly expense was 1.5k incl. mess and canteen when I was a "frugal" guy.) If this guy made it to IIT, it must be his determination and parents would, at best be able to tell him "do as you seem fit". I fear touching such parents, will complicate their simple lives.

I would think the parents are the same as they have always been, so are students, so are the expectations and so are the professors.

So what has changed?

Last December I visited IIT-K after almost 10 years. Like everyone else, the place had so many fond memories of my days, but in this visit I found the place had completely changed. There are so many rules, so many security guards, so much traffic, I just could barely relate to the place with my memories.

All the freedom, coziness is gone, so has the personal space we had. The infra is far too loaded than it should be and that is causing the stress. I felt stressed out walking around with so many SIS guards staring at me in a 100 m stretch. That in my view is the main problem. There is no personal space for people to catch a breath and take right decisions.

We need to create that space again. I would think we need a more "social"(as in facebook social) solution. The stories are good, people will read and discuss. Also, the counselling service needs to be revamped and made a by the students, for the students body and it should have people who are interested in people rather than the ones professors thinks should represent counselling service. There should be proper tracking by students or may be by alumni. Another thing, we can do is to assign an alumni,with similar background, with individual students to communicate on emails or phone, may be. Getting in touch directly a person will have even better impact than reading stories about them.

Even though its been 12 years and I had barely spent 15-20 mins in "intro" with him, the pain of loosing that junior, not being able to help him, is still in my heart. I hope we come up with something that helps!