Dump & Dumber

This blog is about something which might make the ubiquitous software professional, wherever he/she is, squirm uncomfortably in his/her seat. It is about that taboo term in a software company (at least as far as their academy is concerned), dumps.

Dumps, as you might well know, refer to the 'material' used by a large portion, nay almost everyone, of budding software enginners, in order to succeed in their internal/external certification exams. In other words, if certifications were a computer game, then dumps are its cheat codes. I hold my hand up here, as I have on occasion used them quite extensively myself. Let's face it, anybody who claims to have never used them in clearing their exams at some point in the past, is either a lying hypocrite or the male version of Mother Teresa.

Weird name, dumps. Although I have to admit, it is the least imaginative of all the aliases I have heard used to describe it. Back in my days at the Cognizant Academy, people were terrified of using the word in classrooms and hallways, lest they be overheard by an eavesdropping Batch Owner, or be recorded on CCTV cameras committing this cardinal sin(!). So, they used to come up with very innovative names for referring to them, the most hilarious of them being the time when they were known as 'sambhar and vadai' and other such misnomers (add the name of your favourite breakfast item here). Things have turned quite sour too for people over-reliant on dumps, on more than one occasion. I have heard rumours about people getting caught red-handed distributing this 'gyan' in toilets and janitor closets.

Given all this history, it really does make one wonder: is it worth the risk?

Let me illustrate by narrating an anecdote from my own experiences. I had a certification exam last month, for which, as usual, my friends (God bless them) provided me with a variety of dumps. Looking at the vast amount of material at my hands, I realized I had the following conundrums:

• How will I be able to remember answers to questions when I dont know what the questions themselves mean?

• How can I trust the veracity of the answers given in these dumps, when I know only too well that it was prepared by some over-zealous fellow Cognizant colleague?

• Why should I spend all my efforts going through pages and pages of dumps, when I can rather learn the actual material, prescribed by the academy for the exam?!(and probably finish learning a lot sooner!)

• Why am I placing my faith on a few sheets of paper, when I can't place it on my own learning abilities? My own self?


When you stop to think about it, you will come to realize (as I did), that the best way to clear any exam is to go about it by that most old-fashioned and effective of ways, hard work. In fact, dumps quite often have the opposite effect on you from what they are actually meant for. They make us dull and unimaginative, while cruelly compromising our knowledge on the subject to a few loose answers. They make us dumber then we really are. (No offence!)

If you put in the hours learning what you are supposed to, instead of pointlessly mugging a load of incomprehensible answers, trust me, you will come through with flying colours. If there's one thing I've learnt all through my academic career, it is that there is no substitute for hard work. And the satisfaction you get from clearing the exam on your own efforts is unmatched.

I realize I may have ruffled a few feathers with this rant, but I've wanted to say this for a long time and finally I've got it off my chest. If there was nothing you learnt from this post, then at least keep this in mind:

Honesty is, and always will be, the best policy!

PS. FYI, I cleared my certification exam with 78 percent, without any help from M/s. sambhar and vadai!