Category Archives: MVGR College of Engineering

Semester Moments Assorted

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Phew! As I solve the eleventh hour queries of students troubled with what is gobbled up through the course of a semester, I found few challenging ones that observed my attention. Curse or thank the mediocrity of those instant guides that are popularly used every examination season; I have learnt a point or two more within my subject, not because they had better lessons, but they had problems confounded in such manner that they forced me to explore more. So, here we go with the three questions:

Question One: Why do we select the point of intersection that is closest to the horizontal axis when we solve games using graphical method?

Question Two: In a transportation problem, why do we form a circuit when we want to identify how much the allocation should be modified and where?

Question Three: If we talk of Six sigma, is it really about accommodating six standard deviations in the process or should it be about reducing the absolute standard deviation?

Goodness me, there is some talent out there.

That is not all I had this semester. There were a couple of embarrassing moments that is attributed to the efforts to try and over teach (not so desirable) and to the efforts of trying to explain the fundamentals more than required (no so needed, I find now). The first moment, I missed computing the standard deviation and got the problem wrong, and it took me a second after stepping out of the class to identify what mistake I committed. But the twenty minutes I struggled in the class remains an experience. On the second moment, I explained game theory very convincingly through out only spoiling one last procedure. I had forgotten substituting calculated values in the original equations to find out the whole range of values required.

If you think these were silly, I am assuming (actually I shouldn’t hope) the students caught more than what I had known myself committing in lectures.

If I were to mention one significant learning from this semester of teaching, I would say it, but it would not be ground-breaking. I figured out that supplying material to students prior to the class is as effective as supplying no material. The later can at least save me some time and energy.

What would I be doing next semester? I am eagerly planning things.

Secretary or Satan?

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Sometimes, I blog to vent my fumes. Today is one such occasion. Even more, this is the second time in less than a month, I am having to vent because of the same person. On the first occasion, as to my original way of learning, I saw that person as of different type. But as I am learning more, I realize that the difference she brings is more satanic.  And after today, I consider her as having done one too many irritating deeds.

Don’t mistake me as complaining on my boss; because this time around,  it is the department’s junior assistant who is creating trouble. To me, it seems as though she has got control on my time table. Whenever I meet her, not only do I end up getting bullshit (suggestions and looks-through-lens), but I am also being dictated on my priorities. Now, let me remind–this is the JUNIOR ASSISTANT. Sometimes, it is worthwhile to remind people of where they are, and what they are supposed to do.

Of a lot of things that she has done to cause my expression in this post, here are a few you might enjoy: Continue reading →

Freshers Day @ SMS, MVGRCE

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Today, 1st October, 2011 would live long in my memory. And so would it be with the senior students who have organized a fabulous welcome party to their juniors who rocked the day on every opportunity presented. I don’t recall seeing such exhibition of energy and stamina in some time. Wow! That was a great day! Oh, Yes. It was Freshers Day for the incoming students at School of Management Studies, MVGR College of Engineering.

The day started at around 10:00 AM with the Correspondent, Principal, and In-Charge Head of the Department sharing a few words with the students. Performances from students shook the stage and music flew all the time. Dance, Songs, Skits, Contest to identify the best freshers…everything was crafted into the script beautifully by the seniors. Juniors have cooperated the way seniors expected them–breaking through hell with their noise. That sound is still ringing my ears. Couple of exciting things were to happen to me: one, bounce on my feet after a long time, and two, get a few roses from students (I had to be shy writing this, but then it is the effect of the day that I find new freedom!).

I am so happy to have all your love, friends.

All that aside, I promised to click a few pictures. I could do it partly, and could not do it for the significant second-half of the show. But I hope that is fine, we had many other cameras covering the event. I would have loved to cover it all, but had to save my energy to be with you all (believe me, my camera was heavy!). Of those I covered too, I am not greatly satisfied because I missed a few great moments, and on other moments I had technical glitches. Some were high action scenes where photos were spoiled, and some time it was poor lighting. Some scenes were repeatedly shot in burst modes. All in all, however, I could gun my camera about 250 times or so. I have uploaded all those pictures here using picasa web albums. I wish you find some of them good! Also, some videos I shot during the event are now uploaded on YouTube. You can watch all of them here.

I need to make a request too. Just to have all the pictures of the event accessible to every student who took part, I ask everyone who took a few snaps to upload them on their picasa web albums, make them publicly available for viewing, and share the link in your comments to this post. If you need instructions on how you can do it, go here.

Some pictures which I thought were good to go a news paper are here:

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It is about Work Ethic

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To have green and beautiful landscapes is often embraced by institutions across the world. It is almost seen as if the success or failure, and the reputation of the institution, are deeply connected to how green and how creative the landscape is. Thus, it is not surprising to find institutions spending lavishly on creating the ambiance and aesthetics. It is of course true that these are partly connected to workmen productivity, but that is a point we can talk at a different time.

Making lawns is an activity that is a most common beginner to these institutions. The way they go about doing this is to plough land, make the soil loose, bring square foot lawn pieces that are carefully grown, set them in the land and patch up work if any to ensure that it gives the look one wanted. To make a choice on how to do these activities seems relatively simple–bring in a tractor and plough land in minutes, bring in people to set the pieces of lawn, and do the patch up works. That is use of technology to get one task out of our court, not necessarily the best of all possibilities. This is what my college, MVGR College of Engineering did.

What my college has done might seem to against the goal of time-saving, but the point is, time-saving is not a real goal when it comes to activities that are not absolute priorities such as this. But by choosing to do it this way, the old school of thought or the classical way, what my college has done I think is to present that it has a good understanding of Smithisian Economics–labor is the real wealth. Instead of using technology that can replace people, to give people to exercise their creative power on objects to get work done, seems to me as a perfect application of principles of classical economics.

It might seem like I am bragging about my college based on one incident, committing a type I error. But then there are several other examples people in my college could give. One of them is not using a Nescafe Coffee Maker, because it might hurt the business of the canteen that has had a long standing in the college. Am I favoring these ideas then? Not necessarily, because having technology makes life comfortable. But I am beginning to embrace these ideas because there is some value they bring in where technology fails–bring in a human element.

No expectation. No getting it!

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Induction is a tough process for those who are organizing it. To manage large crowd of parents with their confused kids who took admission into some college–now trying to figure out if their decision was wise–is indeed a challenging task. Challenging as I say, I would guess, means something different from what you may be thinking. You will figure it out by the time you finish reading this post. To start, let me just recollect and phrase down here, the proceedings of today’s induction for the new batch of MBA students at MVGR College of Engineering.

Session started at 10:30 AM with the Vice-Principal, Assistant Principals, and Head of the Department of Management talking about the increasing opportunities for students with professional qualification like an MBA, and how good the college is in providing various things that students might want to have. I am in consensus with what they had to say, not because I work there now, but because I joined there only after knowing fully well that they are the best around this geographical region. Good thing about this session, it ended in exactly forty minutes, as was planned earlier.

Session two was where the course and its curriculum was explained to the audience with a mix of cautionary messages and encouraging words. Each faculty member was allowed to present themselves to the audience and share their opinion about what the course was about, and what makes the students successfully get through it. I went one step ahead in the flow holding that mike–shared my concerns that the younger generation does not exhibit dignity of labour which I think is an essential qualification above all to be successful in life.

Session three. Challenge begins! The Head of the Department invited parents to share their views from what had happened till then, raise queries if any, or give suggestions if they had any. For about ten minutes it happened, and suddenly it started looking as if someone was begging for a response. Each faculty member started jumping in to somehow elicit a movement in the parent community among the audience, but that with least success. The action went on for another fifteen minutes after which I fundamentally decided that these parents surrendered their right to free speech elsewhere, or they must have reserved it for some other occasions. Since no parent turns up, and since it might be offensive to call them up on the stage, we had to ask the students to share their views. It takes another ten minutes of motivational discourse, about six students introduced who they were and said they were happy to have joined this institution.

Do you see what the challenge is!? I am afraid I have to say this.

Parents. If you don’t have any expectation, suggestion, or a view about anything that is happening around you, it leaves me with an impression about the kind of grooming your kid might have got, a continuous dose of ignorance. And now, I am afraid that if you don’t have any expectation, that puts us–teachers–in a position where we do not exactly know what we have to deal with or deliver. I suggest you. Next time you come to our college, please open up and at least have the willingness to ask what is happening, and if you can, go on to express your views about what you are learning or what you want us to learn. Unless you begin talking, please do not expect us to teach your kids to talk. Because, I (and anyone in the world with some social sense) would blame their failures, if any, on poor parenting before I put the blame on bad teaching. Please understand that teaching is no substitute to parenting.

Look at the irony I discover at the end of this post. Even with an expectation and effort, we could not get what we wanted today. Just imagine what could have been the case with an induction that did not even give such a chance, or that induction which has not even thought of such an idea–a platform to exchange views.