Heaven, I'm in Heaven.
I'm an economist by accident, and an educator by choice.
Nothing - and I mean nothing - makes me happier in a professional context than being around students who are learning. I'm an atheist, but as far as I'm concerned, being in a classroom is like praying in a temple.
And for the next three weeks, I am therefore going to be a deeply religious person. Because for the next three weeks, I'm going to help run a Genwise Summer Camp.
I've taught at Genwise since 2021, and been in love with the experience ever since. The easiest way to describe Genwise is that it is a summer camp where curious kids who are eager to learn meet curious profs who are eager to teach.
That is the easiest way to describe a Genwise Summer Camp, but it is very far from being a complete description. What makes a Genwise Summer Camp magical is not just the learning that happens in a classroom, although that is a very important ingredient. But there are chance conversations that happen in hallways, during dinner time, on field visits, and at so many other unexpected junctures. To borrow a phrase from India's best podcaster, a camp maximizes the surface area of serendipity for a student.
Think of the learning in the classroom as the puri in a plate of pani puri. You can't have the dish without the puri, sure, but having only the puri would be a rather unsatisfactory experience.
What makes a plate of pani puri magical is the filling, which of course is made up of so many things. And I could spend the next fifty blogposts explaining to you the ingredients that go into the making of a plate of pani puri, the recipe for each component, the ratios in which these must be mixed, and the temperature at which the pani should ideally be for it to be a perfect plate, but you know and I know that a plate of pani puri can't be explained. It must be experienced.
And so it is with a Genwise Summer Camp. As Robert James Waller wrote many years ago in a book called The Bridges of Madison County, it doesn't make sense to look at, or to try and recreate, the pieces of the camp. It is the whole that makes it magical.
Or, if you prefer, Sholay was about Jai, Veeru, Thakur and Gabbar, sure. But good luck explaining the magic of Sholay by restricting yourself to just these four characters.
Getting this year's camp to happen has been a passion project I've worked on through the year, and in a professional context, it is one of my favorite projects to have worked on. The other was the setting up of the BSc program at the Gokhale Institute.
In both cases, the joy of setting things up, and of working with folks who think about education the same way I do, has been the best thing about the projects. There are two simple concepts that are central to how I think about education in the context of setting up an entire project, as opposed to teaching a course.
First: skin in the game.
One of the first things I signed up for when I joined the Gokhale Institute as a prof was being responsible for placements at the Institute. If you're taking money from students in order to teach them a professional course, then you ought to be responsible for trying to find them a job. Whether a student gets a job or not is not in your control - but getting as many firms as possible to land up on campus very much is. One shouldn't treat this as a favor to be granted to students, but as one's responsibility.
And similarly, at a Genwise Summer Camp, if you're taking money from parents in order to teach their kids at an offline summer camp, then you ought to be responsible for talking to parents while making a sale, assuaging their concerns about travel, accommodation on campus, and all the other questions that a parent might have about sending their child to the camp.
I am an introvert by nature, and would sooner walk on a bed of coals than make even a single sales call to a prospective parent, but hey - you should only ask others to do that which you are willing to do yourself.
My official "title" at the Genwise Summer Camp is Academic Director. But you could, for all I care, call me Grand PooBah of Nonsensical Things, or anything else that you like. My job at the camp is very simple - make sure that nothing stands in the way of learning while you're at the camp. This includes anything and everything from fetching coffee for the folks lucky enough to be teaching at the camp (oh, how I envy them!) to giving a short talk for one of the courses (yay!). And part of my job is to help the young interns who are at the summer camp understand that we're playing total football. Roles, titles and hierarchies don't matter - we do what it takes to make learning as fun and frictionless as possible.
Running a camp is hard enough. Building a culture? That's really hard. And you can only do it with skin in the game.
Second: Life is a non-zero sum game
The reason I do not like to make sales calls is because I am, by nature, a rather shy person. If you take me to a party, my preferred option is to not go. Option B is to retire into a corner. Option C, if you insist, is to strike up a conversation with somebody. And it is for this reason that I do not enjoy making a sales call. And not all sales calls result in sales, as anybody will tell you.
I have had three-hour-long sales calls that have ended in failure, for example.
Except it depends on how you define failure.
I may not have been able to convince a parent to send their child to the camp, sure, but more often than not, I have had a truly wonderful conversation. I have made a new friend. And I have, in one way or the other, been able to help the person on the other side of the conversation with a book reference, a college recommendation, an addition to their personal network and in almost all cases, the conversation itself has been the gift.
One can try and sell by inducing fear, and I have seen my fair share of this kind of selling in academic institutions. Or one can try and sell by making friends, regardless of whether a transaction is concluded during the call.
For example, the year in which we started the undergrad program at the Gokhale Institute, we had a parent who turned up on campus in the evening on a whim to see what the Institute looked like, and to chat with me about what the course was about. His daughter was, back then, unsure about whether to pursue economics or psychology, but had a mild preference for psychology.
I did my best to help out, of course. I shared contacts that I had with professors in the field of psychology in Pune, references to psychologists I knew, books that I had read related to the topic, and what courses in which colleges might work out for her.
She ended up pursuing economics at the Gokhale Institute (and to be clear, the choice was entirely hers). Turns out, the best way to sell is to not sell. Be friendly, be patient, seek to genuinely help as much as possible, and good things happen in life, eventually. Spending time on a random conversation is like paying the premium for a deep-out-of-the-money long call. Good things may or may not happen right away, but what have you got to lose, after all?
For example, a wonderful coincidence that happened was that the same dad turned up to deliver a guest lecture at a Genwise Summer Camp some years later, closing a most wonderful non-zero sum loop for me.
As I have mentioned a million times before, non-zero sum games are a Very Good Thing.
And so here I am, in Manipal, typing this blog post out as I do what seem to be a hajjar other things at the camp. Over the course of the next three weeks, I hope to be able to share snippets of the conversations I hope to have, the teachable moments, and the joys that I experience at the camp.
In-person learning in an immersive environment, without the threat of a zero sum examination at the end of it - that's my idea of heaven. When these classes at the camp are taught by enthusiastic faculty (my favorite people), facilitated by young interns (my favoriter people), and for even younger students (my favoritest people)... well, add in another six heavens!
And I hope to be able to share generous slices of it with you over the coming three weeks.
Let's go!