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Winter Quarter at Stanford DCI
I've completed 4 weeks of my second quarter at Stanford DCI and the experience has been intellectually rich, highly demanding on reading and incredible on student interactions. I rate it high on a sense of personal development and community bonding.
My classes this quarter are on Entrepreneurship in EdTech, Successful Business Models in Emerging Markets, How to be a Designer in Society and Introduction to Sanskrit through Valmiki’s Ramayana.
The course on Designer in Society is focused on psychological well-being and is structured creatively as a ‘book club’. We are given a book list (The Adjusted American, Of Men and Machines, Player Piano, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Wright Brothers, Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees, Plain & Simple, The Achievement Habit) & challenged to read 1 book per week which we then discuss in a circle of 12 students (a mix of masters and undergrads). I am amazed at how thoughtful, mature and grounded the students are from the insights and observations they share.
The two projects we have to work on, as we progress with our readings, are eliminating one thing
from your life and adding one thing to your life. Tough one!
Learning Sanskrit has been rewarding and wholesome. It is a small class of 7 students and most of them are way ahead of me on their knowledge of grammar. We read chapters from the Ramayana, deconstruct the sentences for grammar/vocabulary and also listen to chanting of the shlokas. The professor is
very chilled and patient with us. An interesting aspect of the class is a 10 min presentation by students on any aspect of the Ramayana that interests them. I kicked this off with a nuanced version of Ravana beyond the stereotypical demon- for which I got inspiration from Amish Tripathi. Other presentations were about
Valmiki’s past before he wrote the Ramayana, Dasavathara - the 10 incarnations of Lord Vishnu, a personal account of a Chinsese scholar who went to Germany to study Sankrit and an interesting investigation on medical conditions and ayurvedic treatments referenced in the Ramayana. I could never have imagined studying Sanskrit at Stanford! The last I encountered the language was when I
was in Primary school.
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