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Old Wednesday, April 10, 2013
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No light at the end of the tunnel

By:Anita Saleem

While the rest of the world progresses, our nation simply moves towards deterioration

“Light aa gai” is the happiest phrase here in this part of the world where we exist. ‘Exist’ would be just the right word to define our situation. We don’t grow, we don’t progress, we merely exist. Thanks to the meagre amount of electricity that we are left with. As a nation, we are far from progressing simply because our young ones are unable to spend time in scholarly activities (studying for exams, exploring scholarship opportunities and planning their career). All their time and energy is consumed by allotting the six hours of electricity we get each day. Six out of 24 hours – without exaggeration!

This has been the situation since the past two days. I, being a professor to undergraduate students, am in a fix. On the one hand, my responsibility includes introducing students to use online journal articles and teaching them how to submit a paper in APA format. On the other hand, how is it even humanly possible for them to surf the internet and type out a paper when there is no electricity? All around the world, students at the undergraduate level are expected to meet all these demands and they are more than capable to do it. Our university works just like an American university. With only one difference, our children barely have access to electricity.

Let’s consider another international trend. Worldwide, scholars have mostly gone paperless in order to protect the trees; they use online textbooks and study resources which one can buy easily. I also email my students some of the helpful websites and study materials frequently, but what good is it if they can’t access it?

Last week, I announced in my class that an assignment was due. The assignment included finding supporting peer reviewed journal articles on various issues within health psychology. The students were excited about looking up journals and flipping through articles hoping that one day their articles might also land up there. A few days later, I announced the assignment. However, the electricity situation started deteriorating. Each day we would have less ‘electricity’ time and more time without electricity. It started with 10 hours of electricity and dropped down to only six hours. Eventually, the students got in touch with me and requested me to postpone the assignment or simply amend it in a way that reading a journal article online and submitting a typed paper would no longer be mandatory.

“What? That screws the entire idea of the assignment. We’re doing a 400 level course here. It’s not a joke,” called out a voice from within me. I sat and began to analyse the situation more rationally. Indeed, how could I expect the students to complete computer-related tasks when they had no electricity back home? But at the same time if I did not introduce them to all these things how would they be at par with students in other parts of the world? Clearly, I’d want them to be as efficient and as up-to-date as students anywhere else in the world, but with the limited resources that they’re left with, this seems perhaps too far-fetched an idea.

Nonetheless, I wanted to reach a safe conclusion for the students so I extended the deadline and asked them to spend extra time on campus (on our campus, the computer facilities run till late in the evening). There we go! Problem solved for that class (roughly 20 people).

My mind did not cease to work though. I continued thinking about the countless students all around Pakistan. All the smart children who neither can reach their full potential nor can they invest time with their books. I thought of all the students appearing in their O Levels, A Levels, Matric and Intermediate exams this year. Most of them would probably be off from their schools for ‘preparation leave’. What preparation leave, I wonder. Preparation to deal with undue stress? According to Shelly Taylor, a situation of this calibre which is negative, uncontrollable, unpredictable, ambiguous and continues for days is detrimental both physically (as your immune system is suppressed) and psychologically (as it leaves you feeling not just helpless in the given situation but also hopeless about the future).

While I was teaching the chapter on stress to my health psychology class, I noticed that the American textbook which I use as the main course book (in an attempt to impart international level quality education) had no reference to ‘no electricity’ as a stressor. Even while listing examples of frustration (which is a type of stress in which your pursuit of some goal is thwarted) to my introduction class, the best I could come up with was “Consider the stress that you experience when you have a deadline for your assignment, but no electricity to actually work on it”. I could see all 40 heads nodding in agreement. Who else could relate to this example more than them? No American or British textbook could even think about coming close to this one.

While the rest of the world progresses, our nation simply moves towards deterioration. The only ones unaffected by this situation are the ones whose homes never run out of electricity. They are the few privileged ones that can move up the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and reach the ‘self-actualisation’ stage i.e., reach their full potential. For the masses, however, life has simply come to a standstill. We’re stuck at the lowest level of hierarchy with our very basic needs unmet. Sadly, there seems to be no light at the end of the tunnel.

The writer is a faculty member of the Psychology Department at the Forman Christian College University.

http://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/columns/
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