IBA Social Sciences department has always been a point of debate for its incompetence as compared to other departments. It seems to exist, like the diverse characters with no substance in Netflix series, to account for representation and variety. Ultimately, it is the students who suffer from the blend of compromised faculty, limited resources, and poor management.
It is raining readings and assignments!
I recall being asked in my interview that the IBA Social Sciences department is reading-intensive and whether I will be able to manage it. Being an avid reader of history and social justice literature, I answered affirmatively how reading is my dying passion. Little did I know that I would be doing hundreds of pages of readings, for five distinct courses, all at once, eight times in a row.
In addition to this truckload of readings which start sounding the same after one point, the assignments are an even harder battle. Not only do they run alongside the semester from the beginning till the very end, but also compete with each other as to how lengthy and extensive they can be.
While students from the other departments are able to catch a breath during the reserve week and the weekends (at least some of them), social sciences students try to pack it all together, completing and submitting one assignment after the other.
It is understandable that they are an essential part of the learning process. However, how many reading responses do we have to write to let our instructors know we understand that structuralism is after all the sum of the structure of things?
Where are we headed as a Social Sciences student?
Most of us enrolled in the IBA Social Sciences Department to pursue our interests in Psychology, History, and so on. However, halfway through we realized that this program is not fully equipped to help secure jobs in these fields. In cases such as Psychology, it even fails to guarantee admission to top-tier grad schools by leaving out important components such as Testing. Ultimately, we end up heading towards the same pathway as our peers from other departments. Desperately trying to win personality quizzes and gaming assessments to land an internship at one of the multinational giants.
The Personal Effectiveness (PE) sessions also fail to be of help. They do not address this gap or help navigate a career in the fields we passionately took up during enrolment. Instead, we attend talks from alumni who were successful in the transition from a social sciences student to a corporate biggie.
Moreover, scheduling conflicts and prerequisites deem it impossible to enroll in electives from other departments. This hinders our attempts to expand our exposure beyond our current program. Consequently, we end up taking the same humanities electives, except that they get even more bizarre.
The way forward
At the end of the day, we are mostly on our own. With faculty who only believe in the power of assignments. And management that fails to help students when they are unable to enroll in core courses and major electives. Ultimately, we have to navigate how to synthesize passion, job prospects, and financial returns into a lucrative career option.
Apparently, some changes have been made to the IBA Social Sciences department which will be disclosed on 27th April. At this point, we can only hope that they are of some help.
P.S. As you read this article, one of your instructors must have uploaded another assignment due amongst the zillion others right before the finals. Good luck with that!
One thought on “Challenges of IBA Social Sciences Students”
I love how the article aptly navigates through all the challenges faced by the students.👏