Dirtscapes

The journals were one aspect of engg college which I really don’t remember THAT fondly. Just thinking of all those trees who lost their lives for NOTHING makes me weep. The journals emanated from a master source. Each class typically had one enterprising or studious soul, who would source stuff from seniors’ journals or painstakingly write the experiment descriptions himself. The rest of the class was content to kick back, watch the wildlife, and then jump in as soon as the master blueprint was ready.

Getting the journals ‘signed’ by the profs was an exercise in diplomacy, tact and oily talk. A couple of days before the obtainment of that all important signature, junta would suddenly find a newfound interest in attending lectures. Point to be noted my lord, just merely attending the lectures wasn’t enough, being ‘visible’ was. People would sit somewhere mid-class, so that the prof could see their faces. Whenever there was any eye-contact, we head-banged like no tomorrow, just to show that we ‘understood’ the concept. This was a fail-safe method to ensure that the prof remembered our maps while going through our journal a couple of days hence. (This is a true story…. I used to sit on the last bench in my 1st sem, and attended ALL lectures by a certain Prof. She pulled me up one day in the practs, and told me that she had never seen me in class, and gave me a 12/25 in ‘Term Work’. I vowed revenge. She came back in the 3rd sem, and boy was I ready for her. Would sit every other lecture, in the 4th row, and head-bang whenever her eyelashes just as much turned in my general direction. Result? 24/25 in ‘Term Work’. Heh-heh.)

Now that the preparatory steps were done, the main step was to ensure that we got a signature on D-Day. There were some profs who had really exacting standards. For eg, If you wrote the date as 17/7/2000 instead of 17-7-2000, they’d scratch off the whole experiment(“Who told you write date like thees? I not tale you again …gate lost”). We got stung a couple of times like thees...sorry... this. So we decided on the following strategy.

“Distract the profs by talking weapons grade bull while they are signing the journal, and high-tail it out of there once you’ve got the signature.”

Prof : Show me the journal…

Guerilla Journal Warrior : Here it is …