Acharya Devo Bhava!

Honesty is an important word. Be honest to God and be honest to yourself.

I have always been a good student. Regular and obedient. I am the kind of student who thinks Acharya Devo Bhava (A teacher is equivalent to God). But of late i dont feel the same.
This is because the lecturers are no more honest to their profession. They just see it as an extension of college life.

Usually colleges employ students who are just out of college. The students themselves would not have understood the subject and they are made to teach them. Such lecturers end up being trapped in a profession they hardly like and dont even care about. When students ask them doubts they feel insulted and try to take revenge on them or start buttering the students so that they wont ask any more doubts(sic!). The teaching profession has become a joke due to these kind of lecturers.

Then in my second semester I went for CAD tuition. Shankar Sir taught us CAD. He was such a committed and student friendly lecturer. He would take continuous classes. He called the 9 to 12 pm batch the devils batch! :) He would not mind repeating a solution or concept any number of times. He was very patient. I remember calling him at 6:00 in the morning, on the day of my CAD exam, and he answers my call and clears my doubt just like in class without a hint of irritation in his voice. No wonder he got so many awards. What a brilliant lecturer he was!

Next, I have to talk about Manjunath Aradhya Sir. I have attended his classes for quite a few subjects like Data Structures, Electronic Circuits, OOPS, Microprocessors and now Java. But the man just amazes me with his understanding of each subject. Honestly he doesnt teach according to our syllabus and his classes may not help us for our internals or exams. But he sets a firm foundation and prepares us for our career ahead.

I have seen many lecturers who just mug up lines from the text book and blurt it in front of us. But Aradhya sir teaches us the concepts. Every line he says has to be clear and rational.
For eg, many lecturers just tell us Java doesnt support pointers. But Aradhya Sir explains that pointers are supported in Java but they cannot be explicitly created by programmers because they might use those pointers to access private data thus hampering data security. I know it may not be clear from my words but Sir can convince anyone!

Every class i attend makes me think he is so knowledgeable. He knows so much. He could have easily joined an MNC and made lots of money. Instead he chose to impart his knowledge to thousands of students who can share it with so many others. His honesty and dedication to his profession increases the respect in me for him.

I have heard many mechanical engineering students saying Shankar Sir is nothing less than God for them. The computer science and information science students echo the same for Aradhya Sir. They have communities dedicated for them on orkut! I ll always remember them for being the two lecturers who rekindled the lost respect for lecturers in me.

back to blogging..

As i get back to blogging i realize i have already started 7th sem! That is a long gap between my posts. But my life has been such a wonderful ride until now that i hardly have time to pen it down :) There have been a few bumps too and i think i have managed them well :)

I ll start where i left off. The sixth sem CG project - Graphics Editor. There were very few people who were designing a graphics editor. Out of them, our main rival was The Boys Team! Yup, am not kidding. TBT had kicked off the coding much earlier than us and knew much more than us. We, The Girls Team, wanted to do a better project than them. We had to start from scratch at a very short notice. That is how began the competition which kept egging us on and finally resulted in TGT winning over TBT!!! HURRAY!!! Our project was much appreciated by the students and the staff :)

The success of the project made me work hard for the semester exams. I concentrated hard on maintaining the highest score. But the semester exams turned out to be such a shock that i almost thought i wont pass! Thankfully i got a distinction :) but i couldn't top :( In fact, i wasn't even in the top five!! Not the one to give up, i shall regain my position this time for sure :)

The academic issues will go on. But i shall remember sixth sem for another reason. I had the maximum fun during these days. I always had a regret that i was taking life too seriously. This belief was enforced by the fact that i had nothing to write in my blogs except my college life and exams.

And then things changed or rather i changed!
I got invited to a reunion and i met my school friends. Slowly my contacts developed and my social life improved.
Our family went on a one day trip to Sripuram and it was beautiful. The next day i bunked internals!!!
Next Came The Raghu Dixit Concert! The guy is just amazing! 3 hours of great music and entertainment. I felt young again :)
My confidence grew by leaps and bounds and soon I was organizing a reunion! Can you believe it? I expected a really poor turn out. My friends encouraged me a lot making me thank God for the wonderful wonderful friends that i have. Quite a few people made it and i had another feather in my cap.
These and many more things made me fall in love with life all over again!!! :)

”Live every day as if it were your last, because one of these days you will be right!”