After a stint at grant writing, I am back to teaching M.Sc Biotech students. It has been a trying time as I am teaching a subject new to me - Cell and Tissue engineering to students who are completely new to all the terminology used (no similar subject at the Undergraduate Level) - so it might have been like the blind leading the blind but for my pre-lecture preparations. All my time is spent in it. Either I am lecturing or preparing for it !!! To compound matters, there are some students who sit in the back benches and dont take down notes- and obviously do badly in monthly tests. So I decided to dictate notes in class - this worked for most students. Or so I thought. Till I discovered that one of the students was writing more furiously than I was dictating. He was a picture of total commitment and dedication. But since I discovered that the rate at which I was dictating was less than the speed in which he was writing, my curiosity was aroused. So I decided to investigate. I asked for his notebook which he reluctantly parted with and tried to convey with his smile that the matter that he was furiously writing on was not one that I was dictating. I sat on the front benches ( there are no table and chair for the teacher - that is another matter) and went through his book. It was all about his likes and dislikes - how much he loved music and novels and would be better off with them. He went on pages and pages of his future line of action - business was for him and so on and so forth. He wrote at length of his friends and how he enjoyed hanging out with them. I closed the book and handed it back to him - trying to match his smile with a thought so!! I did not shout at him - as thoughts that he was going through a delicate phase in his life crowded my mind - I just meekly said all this is fine but you must think of Cell and Tissue Engineering sometime too. Two days later he was at the staff room with "Could I have all your notes . I will just xerox them" Wow it was a breakthrough - he was working towards a solution himself!!My day was done.
3 comments:
Student life never changes does it, and it seems to be the same the world over!!!!!
Hi Janet, good to see you are blogging again, in spite of being so busy at work and managing the home too.
You 've been through a lot and have found the strength and courage to go on.
My Mom is better but very weak. Now that she has started eating she will re-gain her health slowly.
Glad Shiela is back to take care of Doly, Love, Amrita
i agree with rebecca, student life does sound the same the world over ...
back in the 80's, i worked at a northern ontario university ... i really enjoyed it ... and some of the students i knew back then - are professors now with their ph.d.'s ... my how time does fly!
blessings on you!
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