For some of my friends in the circle, they
were quick enough to reach on top of the career at a very young age and they
were already printing notes. I started looking at them as an example and for a
moment, I felt to follow the same path. Somehow, I didn’t; because I couldn’t. My
life as a lecturer was well set and I loved the way I worked, the way I lived
and most importantly, the way students responded. Though I wasn’t a popular
figure in the academics, I was known for what I did the best; PJs at my best.
Trying to tickle some funny bones, I always
took a different path while doing something within the pedagogy. Most of my
senior faculty members were surprised to see my unconventional way of completing
the syllabus. It was very difficult for me to be such a strict professor
because I too was once a student and I still loved to be one. Every student
reminded me of things that I never did while I was a student. I still tried to
maintain the minimum decorum while I was around in the campus. Beyond the class
hours, I was one amongst them and they had their part of fun that included me
too. Learning was always fun, and it always is.
Sometimes when I was tired of being too diligent,
disciplined, I took a different route of totally discombobulating and getting
poetic with time. It helped me because, not all the management practices that I
taught, would get me back my college days and definitely they would not help me
retrieve the faded memories. The notes written on blackboard gradually began to
wipe out of my mind, and slowly I started losing grip on my profession. The strength
that is a prerequisite in being such a job is, never being one amongst the
students and using less of your enthusiasm in improving them. The education in
some institutes has turned into business and it is no longer perceived as a holistic
service. I still have my heart tugged to this part of life where I feel I can
do better and I can change the perception. I feel vulnerable every time I think
that I have no links in the top management and I won’t be able to take this
initiative to its final stage.
I moved on to make a living for myself beyond
the dream of changing the system and this was literally a creative leap of
faith. I went on to pursue the job that was kind of a destiny. Being a beginner
in advertising had its own pros and cons. I had to learn lots of things
on-the-job which were very much different from what I already did back in MICA.
It really helped to tune myself into the work that I was supposed to do
henceforth. For some days, I loved the metamorphosis I was going through, but
later I began to think, ‘is this what I
am supposed to do throughout the day?’ The question was very lame, but the readymade
three-word answer made me a believer.
From being a lucid dreamer, a pun intender, my job was going haywire. Fortunately,
I had resourceful and experienced guides to show me the light of day and push
me beyond my limits to do my best (that was done on purpose for obvious
reasons). Getting my ideas on to the virtual moodboard was necessary to prove
my credibility of ideation. This time, it was me who was giving the test of
creative simplicity (as I would like to put it) and I was finding it hard to
pass with a minimum score. First time in my life I realized that I have so much
to learn even in this field. Being creative is not enough, but being understood
is.
MICA did help a lot and I went bonkers over
it. That phase of my life got the creative best out of me, but this phase is
squeezing every drop of my creative hemisphere in my brains, as well as my
conscious. The learning in this part of life is crucial, and one thing I need
to remember as a tip, as a piece of creative advise is, ‘always keep your thinking caps on’ even if you are doing horseshit
work. If you don’t do, or don’t get to do anything you like, do the work that
everyone like. Once you have punched your finger out of your day’s work, you
are free to do things you want to do. I can very well correlate my earlier job
to this one, but from a totally different perspective. I cannot teach anyone
anything here, but instead I can learn anything from anyone. That is the beauty
of doing a creative job because even the concrete floor can give you strong ideas.
While I still look back to change the system, I want to equip myself with the right
arsenal and make a bombarding entry, this time with a precisely chalked out
moodboard to venerate the power of the blackboard.
Comments