17. Reading Skills Comprehension: Rajivalochan Subramaniam

Rajivalochan Subramaniam

 Read the following passage carefully:

Born and brought up at West Mambalam in Chennai, Rajivalochan Subramaniam considered himself a failure at a US university before rediscovering himself in the field of high energy physics. A PhD was once a distant dream for Rajiv. It is the support of his father A. Subramaniam, a retired government officer, and mother Latha and his grandparents, that has enabled him to pursue his dream at CERN, Geneva.

After schooling in Chennai, where he grew up on mathematics, he studied Electrical and Electronics Engineering. His final year project was funded by the Tamil Nadu State Council for Science and Technology in 2007.

In August 2008, Rajiv joined the Electrical Engineering Master’s programme at Louisiana Tech University, USA, where he got the partial scholarship.

In the US, there is an option to design one’s master’s curriculum, and Rajiv chose a combination of research and academics.

“A majority of Indian students at the university chose the academics option as most of them are interested in a job. Having made a tough decision, I struggled during my first year of MS”, he says.

The open book tests were more difficult than the closed book ones and the research work in electrodynamics made no sense to him. After nine months he quit that research, realising he was not cut out for electrodynamics. This statement of Einstein came to his mind then: Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.

“One year on American soil ended in the Fall of 2009. All of my educational loans was spent and I was depleted financially and morally. My self-confidence was very low during this time as I considered myself a failure”, recalls Rajiv.

It was during this hard period that he met his current adviser/professor Dr Markus Wobisch who is involved in high energy physics. At that time he did not know that his life was going to change. Prof. Wobisch was working with the US Fermi National Lab located in Chicago and Rajiv’s electrical background was good for high energy physics research. “Even for the very minor results that I showed him, he encouraged me to such an extent that I really gained confidence in life:

This moral support pushed him to become a successful PhD student. Seeing his progress, the department chair, Dr Lee Sawyer decided to involve him in mankind’s biggest collaborative experiment, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). And that is how he started working at the ATLAS detector at the European Centre for Nuclear Research (CERN), Geneva, exactly two years before the discovery of the Higgs boson-like particle.

Read the given questions and write the answer in a sentence.

1. Why did Rajeev consider himself a failure?

2. How did Rajeev manage to pursue his dream at CERN?

3. Who funded Rajeev’s project?

4. What did Rajeev find difficult in the US?

5. Why should we not judge a fish’s ability to climb trees?

6. What happened in the Fall of 2009?

7. How did Rajeev get back his confidence?

8. What led to Rajeev working at the CERN Geneva?

ANSWERS:

1. He was not able to cope with University life in the USA. At that point, he thought he was a failure.

2. It was the motivation he received from his father and mother that helped him to pursue his dream at CERN. They supported him and had faith in him.

3. Rajeev did his project as he got funding from the Tamil Nadu State Council for Science and Technology.

4. Rajeev found the open book assessment more difficult than the closed book one. Research in electrodynamics made no sense to him.

5. We should not judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree because a fish can swim well but can never climb. We all should do what we are good at.

6. By the Fall of 2009, Rajeev had spent all the money he received an educational loan. He was very depressed and upset and considered himself a failure.

7. He got his confidence back when Dr Wobisch encouraged him with every result he showed. He encouraged him so much that he gained back his confidence.

8.When he completed his PhD successfully the Chair at the University Dr Lee decided to involve him in mankind’s biggest experiment. That is how he started working at CERN Geneva.

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