Events leading to this day… October 3, 2007
Its been a month since I came to Bangalore. I have a job as a lecturer. Teach Microcontrollers. How do I feel now? Satisfactory. Where do I intend to be a year from now? That would be a very thought provoking question. I intend to be in an IIT doing an M.Tech Program in Signal Processing Techniques. Am I working hard for it? I’ve started to. And I intend to get busy with it.
Teaching is a profession that requires dedication of the highest order. We need to know what we teach and to know what we teach we need to be “in phase” with technology. Specifically with what we are going to impart to the students. Life is never easy. Sometimes we realize that we don’t really know what we are teaching. It happened to me in my first class. At that time life becomes hell especially when someone asks a question that I was wondering about myself.
On another occasion, I was writing a program on the board and I got stuck up somewhere in the middle. I realized that the program that I was writing was going to go the wrong way. I decided to write the program in a different way but all was going in vain. I couldn’t find a proper loop to end the program. I thought of telling the students that this was the program without fault(their ignorance in class and about the subject would make this very easy). I decided otherwise. I told them that we’ll look at this program in the next class. When I finished the class and got out I rewrote the program again and Eureka it didn’t take me a moment to find the problem with what I was upto. Pity I have to wait 2 days to tell them that I have the right program now.
Engineering Students are the same everywhere. It’s a craze to study in an engineering college, it seems to me. Is college the time to be motivated for a life ahead? I had a discussion with Darryl about this, who was of the opinion that college was the time that people should get motivated for life and career. Its true that this happens to be the case that guys think about life and profession only after getting to a college. Worse still, some think about it only when finishing their course. Reasons vary; from lack of exposure to technological advancements to teachers who “didn’t teach properly.” I have never been a great fan of the latter. But these are just a few of the many excuses that many guys(and I too had) make. That’s one reason I don’t want to give that chance to others.
I feel the motivation factor should play a major role in a ones life when in school. That’s the time when a person needs to decide what would become of him in a few years. The teachers too have more than just an obligation to the students in helping them think beyond board exams. When a person gets out of school he/she needs to be fixed on where he/she wants to be in a few years time. College should come only when they’ve made that decision. One of my teacher once told me that he was going to quit teaching because he was not getting any enjoyment in teaching because the students were not motivated enough to learn or practice what they were being taught.
But there is a question that I’d like to take my leave with…Are teachers in colleges meant to serve only the motivated? If not, then what’s the point in teaching to a bunch of “dummys.”
