There are three kinds of things in life. Things we got to do, things we ought to do, things we like to do. Things we got to do include eating, sleeping, breathing, things that are essential for survival. Things we ought to do are the ones that are expected from us - going to college, behaving properly. Things we like to do are the ones which one should try to maximize in one’s life

Over the last 3 years of my undergraduate life at IIT Kharagpur(KGP), I took few additional subjects, which made my academic life interesting. Additional subjects are the extra subjects that you take voluntarily, extra courses one can take apart the compulsory ones required for degree completion(in my case, a degree of Mechanical Engineering). Compulsory subjects come under category of things we ought to do. Additional subjects were the ones that I had liked to do. Without these, I wouldn’t have had anything memorable about academics in my college. Here is the list of additionals:

  1. High Performance Computing and Its Applications in Complex Physical Systems (CD61004)
  2. Physical Cosmology (PH60307)
  3. Quantum Mechanics & Quantum Computing (TS70006)
  4. Computational Neuroscience (EC60007)
  5. Introduction to Cognitive Information Processing (ET60023)
  6. Neuronal Coding of Sensory Information (EC60004)
  7. Neurophysiology (BT41022)
  8. Neurochemistry (BS60003)
  9. Introduction to Systems Biology (BT60006)

In a buffet dinner, you may not enjoy every dish you picked. Similarly, not all additionals I took met my expectations. But few excellent teachers offset the less fulfilling courses. Here is a bit about them.

Physical Cosmology

Studying Physical Cosmology under Prof. T.S. Ray was more of an experience than merely doing an academic course. Prof. Ray was a meticulous guy, who had planned the course contents and its structure very well. Despite being an online course, it was close to a blackboard experience due to his setup.

Remarkably, he covered all concepts of course using Newtonian mechanics. Typically, a professor would keep General theory of relativity(GR) as a pre-requisite and cover physical cosmology using GR concepts. Since many didn’t have exposure to GR, he had covered the whole content with Newtonian mechanics for sake of better reach of the subject. A professor putting extra work to make the subject more reachable, is a not a common thing to find.

Another thing worth mentioning is introduction on the first day of the course. Apart discussing briefly about the logistics, instead of directly getting started with the content, he began technical discussion with the question - if the universe is infinite filled with stars everywhere, why is the night sky dark. Many courses begin with the a generic introduction, where you see a slide that forcibly tries to convince you that “this thing is everywhere, we ought to know it!”. But Prof. Ray instead began the discussion with a simple curious question, that provokes students to think because the answer is not so straightforward but captures the essence of the course.

Computational Neuroscience

At the time I enrolled in this course, I had just finished reading “Godel, Escher, Bach” and had started “I am a Strange Loop”. Both are popular works of computer scientist and cognitive researcher - Douglas Hofstader, also a man with great art knowledge and excellent writing skills. The single main takeaway of both Hofstadter’s books was this - there is a mapping between patterned neuronal activity in brain and things we do. Hofstadter proposes that the complex things we humans are able to do(even being conscious(perceiving oneself)) are because of the patterned neuronal firings inside cranium.

I had taken the course - computational neuroscience, just at the right time. The course started with how a single neuron fires these spikes, which are a sudden change in voltage of the neuron. And how this spiking activity encodes stimulus. It was as if the contents of Hofstadter’s books I read had been extended to a technical discussion. The course instructor Prof. Sharba also did a good job. Most importantly, he was patient and was ready to repeat things several times and spend time on doubts. This course had solidified my interest in the field of systems neuroscience.

Neural Coding of Sensory information

This is another course by Prof. Sharba, who also runs the computational neuroscience course. The theme of this course is revolved around how physical stimulus like pixels of light or vibrations are in air are perceived by humans. How do vibrations that reach the air give information about the who is speaking? How can a series of dots on paper be perceived as a line?

It is interesting to see a common hierarchical pattern the human nervous systems has developed for perceiving different sensory modalities. In this hierarchy, each subsequent level encodes increasingly complex features. For example, in visual pathway, if a region of brain encodes lines and edges, subsequent regions in the visual hierarchical pathway encode more complex features like faces. Though, the discussion is filled with biological words like Medial Geniculate Body and Inferior Colliculus, professor emphasizes on understanding of mechanisms than memorizing names. This rare approach, if practiced more widely, could make the world a better place! And also, Prof. Sharba’s examinations are open book examinations.

Introduction to Systems Biology

This course was jointly instructed by two professors. Of the two, it was Prof. Riddhiman Dhar, who had made my experience of randomly chosen course enjoyable. The course had a good title and I learnt from the title that it had something to do with intersection of biology and maths. So, I took to see more of maths in biology, as I had seen in Computational Neuroscience course. The course discusses modelling of how gene networks function together. In case of a signal, like food in vicinity of a bacteria, how different proteins interact and help the bacteria move towards food.

Most fascinating part of the course was the discussion of how a gene circuit in bacteria helps the organism to move towards food. A mapping between gene level functioning and macro level behaviour of the organism. Systems neuroscience tries to find a mapping between neural activity and behaviour. But, this was more fundamental, a mapping between stuff inside cells(genes) and behaviour. Prof. Riddhiman is a very patient guy and he put both effort and time in clarifying the doubts.

In one instance, he had explained a gene network model and mentioned that T-cells exhibit this kind of behaviour. I asked him what these cells were and their location in the body. Instead of just mentioning that they were some type of cells in immune system, Prof. Riddhiman explained different stratergies immune system employs and what kinds of cells are involved. The discussion was focussed on mechanism, not merely on names of cells. I am glad that in college, I could find teachers who emphasised on understanding biology at mechanistic level as opposed to simply memorising names. I feel grateful to have attended these classes during my undergraduate life.

Takeway

All exploratory experiences leave behind some learning. From this additional experience has left few key lessons imprinted in my hippocampus.

1. Its about the teacher, not the course conent

Among the additional coures, some of them were exciting, some of them were good, but some of them felt like burden. The courses that felt like burden had content that I was most excited when I had initially enrolled. In fact, I had independently started reading text book and attempt solving exercise problems before I took one of additional courses, which turned out to be a burden later. The bottom line is no matter how exciting the content of the course is, it is at the end of the day in the hands of instructor that defines your learning experience during the course. One can learn more from a good teacher about a boring topic than from a bad teacher about an exciting topic. Over time, I learnt to also check about the details of instructor other than checking the course contents. Its like being served a meal, that has all the promised ingredients, its just not well-cooked turning your dinner experience into a disappointing one.

2. Good teachers know what its means to know

Unfortunately, in many courses, the completion criteria is often just knowing a bunch of popular things done by popular people related to the subject. But very few realise that subtle aspects of understanding things in STEM. All the good experiences that I had mentioned above are cases where the teachers understood that teaching the subject was not just about conveying what things are, but also bothering about why these things matter!

In preface of a popular physics textbook(“Fundamentals of Physics by Halliday, Resnick, Walker”, as I recall), one of the authors write that the main motivation was a student’s question - why does any of this matter?. I am not just mentioning that every topic discussed, should have a practical application(In fact, practical application is not the motivation behind many discoveries. People do it because they want to understand some aspect of nature that they got hooked about). What I suggest is, behind every discovery or idea, there was a motivation of why guy/girl came up with it. Often, these motivations also give a direction of how the problem was solved. Good teachers understand this, and it is evident in the introductions they provide at the beginning of the lecture. They always talk why any of this matters? This is not just a lesson about courses, but also about the art of learning and communicating.

Why bother taking extra subjects?

My life would have been more peaceful but less exciting, if I had not bothered to take these many additional courses alongside the regular curriculum load. I was also asked several times, why I do it? I admit that I was fortunate that six out of nine additionals were taken, when the semester was running in online mode, where you tend to have more time(time when commute and many social things were off). The time in online semester had given me chance to read wide range of books and choose additionals. But I had continued to do it in offline, though to less extent - taking only one additional instead of two.(the key reason for limiting was that I had my master’s thesis project in Mechanical Engineering department and I was working on other projects in Dr. Sharba’s lab)

Though the time invested could have been done in other productive things like improving my main Grade or working in an online internship(these could turn out to be new and exciting experiences as well). But I wanted to explore out something new and exciting that is in my reach and I wouldn’t be able to get again later in life. The majority people when they say, academic courses are not worth the time, don’t take it; they are correct most of the time. But with a little homework, by finding good teachers, their courses demonstrate that the academic system is not that bad as it is commonly perceived, its just people make it that way. It was like finding diamonds among a bunch of rocks.

How to choose

I wasn’t aware of even how to find additional subjects until I reached third year. If you are someone from KGP, check all the subjects that are running this semester in ERP portal. Choose the ones that have interesting names. Enquire about the quality of course instructors’ teaching. If the course has pre-requisite, convince the prof. that you know them. Choose one or two such every semester!