At the end of the fifth semester we were informed that we would have to do a mini project in the following semester as a sort of test run for the final year project. So it was all the pain, drudgery and humiliation of the final year project but experienced over a short six-week period. Kind of like F1 qualifying on Saturdays.

Once the actual project was over, the reports were put together in record time and we dashed off to submit it and hopefully see the last of this affair. We were all so naïve. Prof. Dud picked out errors with his naked eye that would have required the use of a drafter by a normal person. Title 3 pixels to the left? We did the report again. Circuit diagrams not aligned? We did the report again. Why? All because of another great PCT tradition; scratching. You read that right. Any erring document was scratched, i.e. regardless of the page on which the error occurs, the whole assignment was scratched with a ballpoint pen, so that all the pages would be torn and unfit for further use. You had no choice but to write the whole assignment again. Scratching might seem like a mean and spiteful way to harass students but we were told it was just meant to instill discipline in us. My Lord, forgive me for having doubted the intentions of my professors.

We were fortunate in this case though since this was a typed report and try as they might, they couldn’t ‘scratch’ our soft copies. So we changed our formats, they rejected it and the process repeated. By the 3rd iteration, we were down to deciding whether a particular title would have double or single margins, so as to not have to print the whole report again. After a particularly unsavory incident (I wasn’t involved) I had decided to limit my interaction with Dud. But after 3 rejections, I was running out of people to shoulder that responsibility. So I went. Submitted what I thought was a perfect report. Dud opened the first page and gave me the full benefit of his magnanimous smile. ‘What is this?’, he asked, pointing to the first page where in bold letters (size 14, 1.5cm below top margin) was written ‘ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS’. If three years at PCT had taught me anything, it was never to answer leading questions like these. Whatever a Prof wanted to say, he would say it regardless of whether or not you were making any inputs. Opening your mouth only made things worse. So I waited. Presently he looked up again, sighed, and motioned me to come closer. Holding up the report, he asked me, ‘Acknowledgements? Can you tell me in what book or at what place you have come across ‘Acknowledgements’? There is no such thing!! Arre baba, it’s ‘Acknowledgement’. It’s never written with a ‘s’. Scratch!

We did manage to get our report submitted eventually. So did others. But the IEEE format continued to haunt us over the following year. On every project since, we have spent more time formatting the reports than in actually doing the project. And this was true for everything at PCT; actual learning and experimentation took a backseat to presentation, formatting and ‘discipline’. And people wonder why we are becoming a nation of clerks.

P.S. Dear Prof Dud, there is such a thing as ‘Acknowledgements’. You had never come across this word? Well, like Hector Cyr had said, they usually conceal information like that in books. You might want to leaf through a few yourself.