Tag Archives: Experience

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.

When you are 25

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‎25-26 is not a nice age for a man…. your ex-gfs are getting married , Your career has just started, Elders treat you as unproven theorems, College guys feel that you are too old to have in their group… You seem to enjoy both cartoon and news. You can no longer eat whatever you wish without putting on weight. You look like an ape if you don’t shave daily. You are not invited for weekend cricket matches . Every Aunty you meet asks “Shaadi kab kar rahe ho beta!!” while uncle asks “Career ka kya socha hai beta…”.. When the reality is that you are just riding the wave and going with the flow… You have all the confidence in the world but little achievements to show, You already have the first hand experience of the life , You know that whatever you have been taught about the world in schools has been sheer waste of time. You can be denied a job even after passing the test and you could be given a job if you know someone placed high enough… Politics till now was a dirty word but now you feel it everywhere. You know now love is not that blind and that friendship has its terms and conditions. .You know there is nothing for granted and free lunches are not free… Your overconfidence is now making way for a humble conscience. . You now know it is not exactly what we thought it would be….!!!

~Posted on Vijay Bhaskar’s FB Wall

What I could write

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Not that I have nothing to write, but a question ‘whether I should‘ has been troubling since a week or two. The frequency of my blogging appears to have gone down, and it feels as if I am forcing myself to write a few things. That aside, I have changed my blog theme many times in two years to keep myself interested in doing things differently. Those who have followed my blog since beginning would relate to the new change easily. This is the theme with which I began blogging. There is always a special connection my heart has to this theme. It encourages me to write things I have not thought about before!

Here is my new post then. I just thought I could present you the couple of ideas I could have written about in the last week.

  • I observed a conversation between a teacher and his old student. I recall being the student discussing with my teacher, being a teacher discussing with my student, and now, I had this opportunity to observe the conversation and have a third eye view of how it feels. As a student, I thought my teacher was always wise. As a teacher, I thought all students were alike in their concerns. And now, funnily for me, as an observer, I recognize that all teacher-old student conversations are intricately similar.
  • I observed that I had different experience teaching to two different sections of students. And the difference in experience was primarily because of the time I was spending with them. Where I had limited access to students, students paid more attention to the class, and in general, my teaching experience felt rich. And where students had more time and access to my classes, their attention was diluted, focus was dissipated, attitude was mixed and casual; this was where I felt a little out of decisive control on what and how I could teach in the class. Also, while my general disappointment with students remains as it is, there are different things I am learning from my new community of teachers. And I still find it difficult to make the students turn in their assignments in time.
I guess I have written what I wanted to. My next post I wish could be on procrastination. ;)

Zindagi @ Hyderabad

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Leaving Vizag on 17th evening, I was in a happy mood. I was going to attend my sister’s engagement ceremony. I collected an experience, a childhood memory—playing cricket on roads as a kid. It is such fun to see kids play cricket with their rules such as ten-ball overs, one-bounce caught out, two beats out and so on. It brought a smile on my face, when some kid’s sister walked in demanding she be allowed to join the game, and the boys acted elderly roles of how risky the game is—they were playing with a soft ball. I left Vizag with smiles.

Godavari Express is in general, a decent experience; however, the side-upper berth for a six-footer was not so comfortable. And like there is God, and he must have listened to my sleeping request—one of my co-passengers was an astrologer who suggested how my education should be. I realized through the course of a long discussion after a decade of meeting him the first time; that he might be a good human-being, but is seriously stuck with his ideas grounded in Indian philosophy.

Early in the morning, as I was reaching Hyderabad, what welcomed me was a fantastic scene with the rising sun and the glowing image in Hussainsagar. I have definitely not captured the best picture of the scene that caught my attention, but from a moving train, I think I did my best. And expecting lots of happy time, I moved towards home.

This time unlike others, Hyderabad seemed to be the most happening city. The first systemic trouble I came across was a burst water-tank and huge wastage of drinking water. The tank was not repaired for more than half-day and that meant that the road up to two kilo meters on either side had foot-deep water through which vehicles were moving. I could not do much, but calling the Water sewerage board registering a complaint.

The second issue I face is with the Petrol bunks. I often found them not filling petrol to the money paid. It might be just about 20-30 paise for which they are not filling in petrol, taken at a per vehicle unit. But having spent some time at the bunk, I observed that there are at least 150 vehicles crossing that bunk every minute during any time of the day, and about 20-70 at different times of the night. And invariably, about half percent of traffic turns in every five minutes into the bunk, making it approximately 30-40 vehicles during the day. Per hour, it comes somewhere close to 300 vehicles—which one of the attendants there confirms. The worst case scenario he gives me is about 200 vehicles turning in per hour during the day. That takes his earning by disservice to about Rs. 50-60. On an average day, it could be up to Rs. 800 as one bunk attendant tells me. If that is the case with one bunk near my home, then what would be the case with the system in place? I am not sure, but that is money leaking…add to that, poor service quality.

The third event that I found was not an issue, but a matter of pride for Hyderbadis. The locals celebrating Holi were performing their rituals and their act went to till it was very late in the day. I found them at 10 PM doing what they were, dancing around fire. It was, I could see, symbolic of life of the majority in Old city, Hyderabad.

The fourth issue I encountered with was when I was going to Osmania University. What is generally a pleasant ride of about 45 minutes from my home to the university became a 2-hour nightmarish ride because of an event called Girijana Pradarshana. I have no comments if the event was right or wrong since I have no background to what it is all about. However, what I do know is that causing disturbance to normal course of life is no solution to any problem.

The fifth major thing I met with at Hyderabad was my senior scholar’s final doctoral work presentation. It was a good feeling for me to know my name went into her acknowledgement—and she really did mean it the way she spoke to me. The other lesson I learnt from that meeting was that one of the prime necessities to get a PhD is to stay quiet and not answer the questions that any one from the panel might pose. Because, answering their questions may only trigger a discussion and call for a resubmission of thesis.

Ooph! That was a long post, but then there was lot to share too. I am skipping a lot because I really am busy with some other work. This would be my last post for this month. When I come back in April, hopefully I would have my mind in its place with lots to observe, learn and write. Till then.. I shall keep working. :)

Excellence hopes

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That was a moment when I recalled I am human. Tears found my eyes stopping them. I just experienced brutality of the management killing my spirit slowly, inducing pain increasingly exponentially.

It has been just fourteen months since I joined this organization. My interaction with the management has been scarce; if it is not an understatement. I was supposed to work on my area of research and so I was pumped up about the prospects. But it was not long before disillusion struck me hard about what I had to expect. And the lesson was “Don’t expect anything”. Optimism, later acted and rigorously tried, did not yield much, except for political talk dodging the issue presented. In one word, the pain endured is indescribable sheerly because it was a mind-numbing experience, passive, pesky and perilous.

I gave up hope for excellence and started finding better places in mediocrity, for the power of mediocrity is such that hope for excellence fights and dies in it. But the nature of excellence is not to give up hope. And so I guess, I found one team that I could be a part of. It was a team with members all of whom shared the same goal as I did; excellence. The funny thing about us – mention not, we are a part of mediocrity.

As excellence draws out the best, so did the team challenged itself to doing more and more good things. For a month since joining this team, I began finding glimpses of hope, to find my real goal through a team that shares it. What I did not think a matter was the label of the team I was getting into. How mediocre I must have been to be a part of a system that values labels but not see it! And how well the team must have performed for me to be blinded!

Just as I thought it was happy times returning – being a part of this team – a momentary absence of team in its original form left me with the burden of carrying its label. I would otherwise be proud to carry the label, but for the weight that it gets in the system I am a part of. I realized it at that moment. I recalled I am human.

I do not see future. But if what they from the system indicate is to come true, I am stuck in the system for long enough to kill the last scratch of optimism I might have. If I were to face it, I know (knowledge is indeed a curse sometimes) by experience that I am either defending or losing; not a good trade-off to make decisions. Yet, how does my heart pull me to work for this team, I do not know. May be, it is a certainty that things can’t get any worse than they already are. But do I know? Or, may be, it is the team that attracts me with its energy and optimism. But can it sustain?

I am left questioning only myself, is there a hope still?

My Student’s interesting question

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There have been many ‘first times’ to me in the last week and a half. But I cannot claim the same for my teaching experience. But rarely does a student question, and almost invisible are those which spark. One such interesting question sprang up in the most irritating class yesterday:

When a class is performing mediocre all the time, and when some faculty comes through doing things differently and expecting huge; don’t you think he is only going to feel bad, make the students feel bad, and make things messy?

What a fantastic question! I loved it at that moment, for a reason that somebody had the mind to perceive, and that somebody had the guts to shoot a question, and all that was done with a purpose in an acceptable class room setting. It was no joke, no satire, no comment from behind the back of fellow students. It was a genuine question. And I answered it.

May be my answer sounds diplomatic, but my heart believes in it. My answer was that it is all wrong with the system, if things get messy. Feeling bad is almost unavoidable, and reasons can be many; perhaps, demanding faculty is one of those for a student. But rolling back the story a little, one would know that expectations were placed before entering a system, by the system, and were later drubbed by the system (I am referring to all those souls who tried to change the system). Now, I think if the system can change (not that I sound optimistic on that), then I believe the whole thinking process of people within would also change. One can argue it is the other way around. All I have to offer them is–I have seen by experience–that the former is easier than the later.

Now, somebody might ask me who is to be found at fault with a wrong system, may be the one where I am currently. I have a very valued (researched rather!)opinion in my head. I played a distinctive role in the college so far, both as a student and as a teacher. And my expectations on both platforms were battered brutally by the other parties, and my communication to clarify was seen (if I can say) rather strangely. I have experienced that feeling in many responses that have come through during my stint. So in my opinion, there is nothing I would achieve by pointing to people at how strange they were to me (as I must have been to them), but believe that the system is such and that it needs change.

I am smiling now writing this, because my consultant/academic mind tells me that it is wrong at the larger level. We are such a high context society, that any bit of open communication seems strange and awkward.

Life is fascinating, and how so uncomfortable sometimes can it be!