Being a Biomedical Engineer in India
A young and vibrant girl was extremely excited. As excited
as Bilbo Baggins from The Hobbit who was going on an adventure. A tedious and difficult
journey lay in front of her. She had reached a milestone in her life and was
embarking on a new journey to gain more knowledge. She had done a good deal of
research before starting on the path she wanted to take. In the beginning, she
was confused but after her research, she concluded that although the path she
had chosen was less travelled, it was going to be more exciting than the
others. More challenging, and more diverse of all the other paths available.
She would encounter a variety of subjects on her journey and honestly, that was
the part she was looking forward to the most. But little did she know that she
was going to be right in the intersection of two warring factions, and none of
them would like her.
Sounds like a great beginning for an adventure story,
doesn’t it? But let me get more real and tell you that this is not an exciting
adventure story. This is about me. I was the young, vibrant girl and that was
the time when I was going to start my undergraduate studies majoring in
Biomedical Engineering. Who are the two warring factions, you’d ask? Engineers
and Doctors. Or my fellow Telugu speaking people would know. People who chose
MPC during their Intermediate studies vs people who chose BiPC. And I was smack
in the middle of both those factions. I call them factions because they
literally hate each other. Or that’s what I understood from being a Biomedical
Engineering student and taking courses from both an Engineering and a Medical
College.
To the uninitiated, after you finish 10th grade
in India, or more specifically Telangana/Andhra Pradesh, you’re given two
options (there’s more than two but nobody cares about the rest). You could
choose Maths, Physics, Chemistry as your primary focus and that’s MPC (the
expansion is the same subjects you’d be focusing on) if you’re smart enough.
But not all of them are good at Maths, are they? If you are not, that’s not a
problem. You could choose Biology, Physics, Chemistry as your primary focus
subjects, for which you’d have to study BiPC and eventually become a doctor.
Now this path is daunting and long and tedious but it’s extremely worth it as
you could be making big bucks without having to move to another country like
the MPC people eventually do to make more money. Now, what do you do if want to
study both Maths and Biology? Like me? Well, there is an option called MBiPC
which is not very commonly offered and is also advised against because you’d
neither be fully focused on becoming an engineer nor a doctor. It’s just trying
to be a jack of all trades (or a jack of two trades should I say? Those two are
the only ones that matter!) and end up becoming a master of none. And a master
of none doesn’t make big bucks. So that is not a good idea.
After a lot of contemplation, I took the easy path and went
on to do MPC. This was for two years and I don’t remember a single time I
wasn’t distressed during those entire two years. After it was done, I decided I
did not want to be so distressed all the time. That’s where the vibrancy came
from. I was young, and decided against being distressed, so I was also very
vibrant. Now, I had to become an engineer but what engineering should I do? I
saw that I qualified for a Biomedical Engineering course in one of the oldest
and prestigious universities in the Telugu speaking states in India. I jumped
at the opportunity and it kinda felt meant to be, because I did want to do
Biology in my Intermediate. This was perfect! “I was going on an
adventure!!!!!”
Once the adventure started, I realized that none of the
other engineering batches considered us one of them. We were always a separate
group. Even lecturers used to point out that we were Biomedical Engineers and
we were the worst amongst all the other engineering departments. It hurt
honestly. I wondered why we were so looked down upon. The Maths professors,
especially, always pointed out our inadequacy in the subject (I’m not amazing
at Math but I’d like to think I’m decent. Not to be a show-off but I enjoy
Calculus, better than basic Arithmetic, and I think I’m good at it.). The
second year of Engineering, we were sent to a medical college to take some
classes on Anatomy, Physiology, and Biochemistry. This was an exciting aspect
for me as I was gonna be doing something that was so different from my regular
courses in my first year. But I was soon deflated after my first day in the
Medical College where we were told that Biomedical Engineers are extremely
undisciplined and lack the capability to work hard like doctors do. I also
remember one incident, where a doctor lecturer scolded us for not remembering
the name of a bone. And to quote her, she said, “This is not your Maths!” This
is a very common trait of most Indian doctors. They hate Maths! In fact,
they’ve only become doctors because of their inability to grasp Mathematics and
are looked down upon by Engineers who believe they’re Math experts. There’s so
many boundaries between subjects and courses in India. If you’re good at Maths,
you should hate Biology and the thought of understanding it. If you’re good at
Biology, you should hate Maths. Does this hinder collaboration amongst
different domain experts? Are these barriers broken at a higher level amongst
scientists where collaboration is absolutely necessary? I wouldn’t know and
can’t comment on it but I’m sure some amount of this contempt is carried upwards
as well.
I’m always fascinated by the diverse majors and minors
people in the United States have. I’ve seen Computer Science majors, minor in
Psychology. Or History. There was one person, whose course I recently took
whose qualifications fascinated me. She was an astro-physicist and a
folklorist. How cool is that? That would be so cool to tell someone. That I’m
an astro-physicist and also a folklorist. Can’t get over how incredibly cool
that sounds! Makes me want to do my Bachelor’s here again. I would probably
have taken courses in English Literature or something like that. English was my
favorite subject in school and I was ridiculed by many people for saying that
because your favorite subject could be only Maths or Biology. What’re you gonna
do with English? Be an English teacher? (I don’t see what’s wrong with that but
apparently it’s bad). I am also to blame. I took the easy way out, did an
Engineering degree, migrated to the US, finished my Master’s and am working for
a corporate. I am no different than all these people I ridicule and laugh at.
In conclusion, the point I wanted to make was that there’s
way too much hate between people who do different courses back home. Here, it’s
so different. People respect whatever course you take. Be it Music, Film
Making, Creative Writing, Computer Science. And the coolest part, is that
people get you’re only 18 and figuring things out. You don’t have to decide on
a major right away, and even if you do, you don’t have to stick to it. You can
take courses from other disciplines and become an astro-physicist major with a
minor in folklore mythology (Sorry, I keep mentioning that again and again but
isn’t that the coolest?!). This kind of flexibility and openness is lacking in our
current education system. So yeah, in conclusion, one final time, this is just
another post criticizing the Indian education system. 😊
