When 'the name given for a teacher in an University or college' is searched, the results returned indicate that the North American usage is 'Professor' whereas the Britain usage is 'Lecturer'. Since we are more familiar with a culture that has begun to so easily creep into our daily lives since the inception of the internet than the one that was forced upon us for nearly 200 years, I brought about myself to proceed with 'Professor'.
But before I proceed ahead with the small story which caused me hurt and prompted me to type this post, one needs to be made aware of the 'Open elective' system prevalent in our University for engineering courses. As students reach the final semester of their under-graduation, they are required to study/learn 4 elective courses which are in no way related to the engineering curriculum but play a larger hand with general life. And the choice of the courses is left with the students, their cumulative grades being the only criteria for the allotment.
The choices that a majority of the students make are seldom based on the application relevance of the courses to life but instead on the 'leniency' and the 'selfless mark awarding' levels of the professors who handle the courses. I would be completely at fault blaming this majority because I followed the very same requirements before selecting my choices for the elective courses but a very trivial and a foolish (or probably not, thinking about it now) mistake that I committed by failing to save my preferences ensued with me being allotted 4 courses that no other student had picked - in our University's words, 'Default courses'. And I guess it would be clear from the above statements that the professors who handle these 4 courses were ones whose 'leniency' and 'selfless mark awarding' levels were close to zero and the other students who had been allotted the courses were also ones who had failed to register their preferences.
Needless to say, I never cared about what every single professor taught in each of the four courses, since their commencement, though two of the courses were closely related to everyday life applications. It was a conscious, and if I may state bluntly, an arrogant decision on my behalf - one that just continued in its course ever since a one-and-half-year prior revelation that it was pointless to try to learn something that the heart found no connection with.
But there are days when you run out of personal problems to ponder over and filmmakers' lives to dream about. There are days when both of your regular companions in the classroom decide to absent themselves for the class, leaving you alone at your desk. And it was on one such day, out of absolute boredom, that I decided to pay attention to what my 'Physics of earthquakes' (1 among the 4 elective courses) professor was talking about. The first two statements that I listened to made no sense to me.
But his third statement began, "For example, try recalling the poori and chappathi your mother makes at home." and my interest was piqued. He continued, "If you look at the poori, you will notice that it has a golden brown shade evenly spread throughout its surface. But when you look at the chappathi, you will notice that there are black spots unevenly distributed at a few regions. Why do you think this happens?" and there was a five-second pause with a glance to see if anyone responded and realizing that there was not going to be an answer, the professor continued, "Oil, which is a liquid, causes the heat to spread uniformly. And hence the consistent golden brown shade with respect to the poori. But this is not the case with solids. That is the reason for the uneven black spots in the chappathi. Very similar are the processes of convection and conduction that take place within our earth's interior regions."
His explanation surprised me and thanking him in my mind for the topic he had given me to think about, I decided to switch over my thoughts to the times at home when my mother would exclaim with delight when a chappathi would rise like a partially filled balloon from the pan and would start making comparisons to the one showed in the Pillsbury atta advertisement to my utter dismay. But his next statement blew me away.
"If you want another real time example for the method of heat transfer in liquids, just think about the Communist agenda. They want equality throughout and they stress that the wealth be equally distributed among the people. Something similar with the liquids too. They are communists. They are not like the capitalist solids that try to disperse wealth to only particular regions."
And I looked at him dumbstruck. He was the first professor/teacher who had used a political example (especially one that involved communism) to explain a scientific concept in my entire academic life. As I looked at him, my heart filled with joy at his utterance of the term 'communist' - You rarely get to hear a fellow college student or a professor speaking about communism in Tamil Nadu except if the field of study is 'Political science' - there grew a loud murmur among a few students, no way related to the professor's explanation. And the professor, one who could be easily angered, started shouting out at the students who were causing the disturbance. As his anger filled statements continued to fly towards the victims, a thought that had never before struck me, looking at my professor, hit me like an earthquake (metaphor intended!).
How would the gentleman feel when he realized that he was made to handle a 'Default class' because he refused to crack silly jokes and award easy marks? How would he feel when he realized that he was overcome by other professors who, less knowledgeable and less capable than him, did not find an issue with making compensations by awarding gracious marks for the areas of their courses that they failed to cover properly at class? How would he feel when he realized that he had been rejected unfairly?
As I continued looking at my professor, I couldn't help feeling sorry for him.
Rejection, in any form and in any manner, never ever heals completely.
And as I thought about this issue later, a much more discomforting question arose.
How would any professor who faced 50 students feel when he realized that there was not a single eager person in the class to whom he could impart the knowledge that he had so passionately gained over a period of 10 or 15 or 20 years?
An immediate response to this thought was memories of the first days of each of my semesters that had passed when a professor would ask, facing my class, as to how many of us had chosen Bioinformatics on purpose and all of us would start laughing with one of us stating it out, after a few moments, that it was the only course we could get for the higher secondary examination marks we had secured.
Earlier, on every such occasion, I had taken pride in laughing at the professor for asking such a silly question for which he knew the obvious answer. But after the discomforting thought that had cropped up, I imagined the moment when the professor stood facing the class, knowing that none of the students had taken the course out of choice, and had to make up his mind to teach every single concept he had so lovingly learnt, for the entire semester that would follow, to a classroom filled with students he now knew had no interest towards what he was about to teach.
The imagination hurt me. Terribly.
And the hurt slowly transformed into anger as the main cause became clear.
The 'engineering' mania.
There is a general outcry that thousands of students are made victims every year by being forced to pursue an engineering degree when their hearts truly lie in other fields of life.
But we seldom pay attention to the professors (as is the case in most engineering classes) who face a new batch of students every year hoping that they might finally have more students in the new batch, than the earlier batch, who would want to really learn what they have to teach.
The professors, in fact, are the real victims.
They, unlike students, cannot hope to escape after 4 years.
And it is for this reason, I believe that the least any student could do is to pretend that he/she is interested with what is being taught by the professor instead of making an outright demonstration of disinterest.
Why should the professors suffer for our incompetency to convince our parents to let us pursue our real interests?
The professors, unlike most people, are doing what they really set out to do.
If not anything else, their passion in itself needs to be respected.
But before I proceed ahead with the small story which caused me hurt and prompted me to type this post, one needs to be made aware of the 'Open elective' system prevalent in our University for engineering courses. As students reach the final semester of their under-graduation, they are required to study/learn 4 elective courses which are in no way related to the engineering curriculum but play a larger hand with general life. And the choice of the courses is left with the students, their cumulative grades being the only criteria for the allotment.
The choices that a majority of the students make are seldom based on the application relevance of the courses to life but instead on the 'leniency' and the 'selfless mark awarding' levels of the professors who handle the courses. I would be completely at fault blaming this majority because I followed the very same requirements before selecting my choices for the elective courses but a very trivial and a foolish (or probably not, thinking about it now) mistake that I committed by failing to save my preferences ensued with me being allotted 4 courses that no other student had picked - in our University's words, 'Default courses'. And I guess it would be clear from the above statements that the professors who handle these 4 courses were ones whose 'leniency' and 'selfless mark awarding' levels were close to zero and the other students who had been allotted the courses were also ones who had failed to register their preferences.
Needless to say, I never cared about what every single professor taught in each of the four courses, since their commencement, though two of the courses were closely related to everyday life applications. It was a conscious, and if I may state bluntly, an arrogant decision on my behalf - one that just continued in its course ever since a one-and-half-year prior revelation that it was pointless to try to learn something that the heart found no connection with.
But there are days when you run out of personal problems to ponder over and filmmakers' lives to dream about. There are days when both of your regular companions in the classroom decide to absent themselves for the class, leaving you alone at your desk. And it was on one such day, out of absolute boredom, that I decided to pay attention to what my 'Physics of earthquakes' (1 among the 4 elective courses) professor was talking about. The first two statements that I listened to made no sense to me.
But his third statement began, "For example, try recalling the poori and chappathi your mother makes at home." and my interest was piqued. He continued, "If you look at the poori, you will notice that it has a golden brown shade evenly spread throughout its surface. But when you look at the chappathi, you will notice that there are black spots unevenly distributed at a few regions. Why do you think this happens?" and there was a five-second pause with a glance to see if anyone responded and realizing that there was not going to be an answer, the professor continued, "Oil, which is a liquid, causes the heat to spread uniformly. And hence the consistent golden brown shade with respect to the poori. But this is not the case with solids. That is the reason for the uneven black spots in the chappathi. Very similar are the processes of convection and conduction that take place within our earth's interior regions."
His explanation surprised me and thanking him in my mind for the topic he had given me to think about, I decided to switch over my thoughts to the times at home when my mother would exclaim with delight when a chappathi would rise like a partially filled balloon from the pan and would start making comparisons to the one showed in the Pillsbury atta advertisement to my utter dismay. But his next statement blew me away.
"If you want another real time example for the method of heat transfer in liquids, just think about the Communist agenda. They want equality throughout and they stress that the wealth be equally distributed among the people. Something similar with the liquids too. They are communists. They are not like the capitalist solids that try to disperse wealth to only particular regions."
And I looked at him dumbstruck. He was the first professor/teacher who had used a political example (especially one that involved communism) to explain a scientific concept in my entire academic life. As I looked at him, my heart filled with joy at his utterance of the term 'communist' - You rarely get to hear a fellow college student or a professor speaking about communism in Tamil Nadu except if the field of study is 'Political science' - there grew a loud murmur among a few students, no way related to the professor's explanation. And the professor, one who could be easily angered, started shouting out at the students who were causing the disturbance. As his anger filled statements continued to fly towards the victims, a thought that had never before struck me, looking at my professor, hit me like an earthquake (metaphor intended!).
How would the gentleman feel when he realized that he was made to handle a 'Default class' because he refused to crack silly jokes and award easy marks? How would he feel when he realized that he was overcome by other professors who, less knowledgeable and less capable than him, did not find an issue with making compensations by awarding gracious marks for the areas of their courses that they failed to cover properly at class? How would he feel when he realized that he had been rejected unfairly?
As I continued looking at my professor, I couldn't help feeling sorry for him.
Rejection, in any form and in any manner, never ever heals completely.
And as I thought about this issue later, a much more discomforting question arose.
How would any professor who faced 50 students feel when he realized that there was not a single eager person in the class to whom he could impart the knowledge that he had so passionately gained over a period of 10 or 15 or 20 years?
An immediate response to this thought was memories of the first days of each of my semesters that had passed when a professor would ask, facing my class, as to how many of us had chosen Bioinformatics on purpose and all of us would start laughing with one of us stating it out, after a few moments, that it was the only course we could get for the higher secondary examination marks we had secured.
Earlier, on every such occasion, I had taken pride in laughing at the professor for asking such a silly question for which he knew the obvious answer. But after the discomforting thought that had cropped up, I imagined the moment when the professor stood facing the class, knowing that none of the students had taken the course out of choice, and had to make up his mind to teach every single concept he had so lovingly learnt, for the entire semester that would follow, to a classroom filled with students he now knew had no interest towards what he was about to teach.
The imagination hurt me. Terribly.
And the hurt slowly transformed into anger as the main cause became clear.
The 'engineering' mania.
There is a general outcry that thousands of students are made victims every year by being forced to pursue an engineering degree when their hearts truly lie in other fields of life.
But we seldom pay attention to the professors (as is the case in most engineering classes) who face a new batch of students every year hoping that they might finally have more students in the new batch, than the earlier batch, who would want to really learn what they have to teach.
The professors, in fact, are the real victims.
They, unlike students, cannot hope to escape after 4 years.
And it is for this reason, I believe that the least any student could do is to pretend that he/she is interested with what is being taught by the professor instead of making an outright demonstration of disinterest.
Why should the professors suffer for our incompetency to convince our parents to let us pursue our real interests?
The professors, unlike most people, are doing what they really set out to do.
If not anything else, their passion in itself needs to be respected.
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