Consumer Stipends Proposals: Fill & Download for Free

April 28, 2016I had consumed too much coffee the night before my Mechanics end semester paper. Coffee is a strong diuretic. Dehydration due to frequent urination and loose motion followed.Add to that three nights without proper sleep.Result? I dozed off in the examination hall. Wrote probably just one answer.Went back to my room all blurred up.If only I studied the chapters a bit earlier.May 5 , 2016I knew I am going to flunk that paper. Summer Quarters was a dreaded concept. I would have to spend majority of my summer vacations in Kharagpur. AWAY FROM HOMEThe Summer Quarter is a period of additional classes and instruction organised every year during the summer vacations, to help first year undergraduate students who did poorly during the regular semester in a particular subject.I don't know what hurt me more, the homesick having to spend his vacation away from home or a once stellar student doubting his own academic prowess.I checked the results at 5 PM in the evening. The inevitable had happened.Summer Quarters beckoning you Djokester.2nd YearA conscious effort to attend all classes. A literal mental struggle to make sure not to let any such stupid slip up occur again. Cause this time there was no Summer Quarter. Neither was there any Supplementary papers for second years. (IIT Kharagpur rules)Fail in a subject and it goes straight into your backlogs.And then there was coding. Something I really enjoyed doing. Balancing the two was a tough task initially. But then I got better at both.I decided to give the prestigious Google Summer of Code a shot.The Google Summer of Code (GSoC) is an international annual program, in which Google awards stipends (of US$2,400, as of 2017) for Indian students who successfully complete a requested free and open-source software coding project during the summerMay 5, 2017Exactly a year later.Why does time pass so slowly when we want it to hit the accelerator?I went for a tour around the campus. Came back showered. Looked at the clock. 9 PM.Started watching YouTube videos.Waited and waited.9:28 PMsummerofcode dot withgoogle dot comLogged in9:29 PMRefresh9:30 PMRefreshServer is downRefresh again.Dashboard Said Portland State University. First Evaluation Date. Name of Mentor.Took a while to register.Email Notification pops up in the corner.Google Summer of CodeGSoC 2017: Congratulations, your proposal with Portland State University has been accepted!Exactly a year later.I fight back.Peace!PS: Just a few pieces of memorabilia to motivate my juniors who are looking to put in a fight for the program.This is the Certificate of Completion

The coronavirus put spokes in the wheels of the egoistic-competitive paradigm that we had accepted as the norm until recently.It is because we have reached a point in human development where we need to start growing beyond our egoistic human nature, the inclination to personally benefit at the expense of others.In other words, our present era is characterized by nature pressing upon us to enter into balance with its interconnected and interdependent form, and thus, it is no longer tolerant of our abuse.As such, businesses involving the exploitation of people and nature will gradually disappear. The days of opening any business we want—with profit motives at the forefront, and social and ecological considerations in the background, if at all—are over.We thus have a major undertaking ahead of us. It requires none less than to balance with nature, i.e., to adjust our attitudes to each other in adaptation with the integral relationships among everything existing in nature.As nature functions according to laws of altruism and interdependence, so too we need to upgrade the quality of our relationships—from egoistic to altruistic, divisive to well-connected—in order to experience healthy, safe and happy lives, balanced with nature.We have interesting times ahead of us. I think that when we eventually become freed from the pandemic’s conditions, we will more clearly feel how there is no return to the steroid-pumped capitalistic framework we were in before the coronavirus entered our lives.At that stage, I also see us starting to acknowledge the extent to which we have changed.Where until recently, people respected the idea of increasing profit margins, paying more attention to the digits in each one’s respective bank accounts than to other people’s well-being, I think more and more people will despise such a tendency.We will enter into a difficult and confusing period. There will be a a lot of effort put into trying to revive the pre-coronavirus world together with an increased distaste with that world.Businesses and consumer habits will become more essentials-focused, and people will hold to more normal universal values.As we head into the future, people wanting to run businesses will need to think very hard about whether and how their business will provide people with something they really cannot do without.Nature itself will no longer let us splurge in surplus leisure. High unemployment will sweep through societies and the unemployed will be unable to find work that deals with nonessential goods and services.Governments will be faced with a major problem in terms of what to do with their vast unemployed populations.I have proposed a model, which recommends paying these people a stipend that covers their needs in exchange for engaging in a new form of education that teaches how to live harmoniously in today’s interdependent reality—the kind of education absent from the schooling system that raised us.The rest of the the population will be engaged in needed and vital work for humanity, and not in work for the sake of profits, riches and individualistic success at the expense of others.I sincerely hope that we arrive at such a setup sooner rather than later, because we will reach it one way or another.While we perceive ourselves as separate from nature, able to seemingly think and act freely, we simply fail to see that we are nature’s parts, and nature is guiding us to match its laws with or without our awareness.We have reached a stage of development where we experience nature’s disagreement with our excessive exploitation of its resources and of each other, in the form of the coronavirus. And I see this pandemic as our first major stage of purification.Above photo by Ryoji Iwata on Unsplash.

Expected funding in PhD programs has to be considered in three different parallels.Experimental studies: Costs related to consumables, experimental setup, machines, computers, assistance, fieldwork etc. If your project is sponsored by a funding agency, most of it will be covered. Before joining a research group, figure out details about the duration and nature of funding for the proposed project.Living Expenses/stipend: Mostly covered in other answers. In consideration with your stream and educational background, many government fellowships can be targeted. Every program is supported by one and usually requires qualifying national exams like- GATE, NET etc.Travel Fellowships: Travel fellowships can usually be sourced from institute support, central agencies or particular fellowships.However, funding situation for integrated PhD will not be different from the funding scenario of a usual PhD program in your area.