DigiScribbles V

I teach, yes I do!! I teach undergraduate architecture students and have been doing this as a full time profession the past few years and with gay abandon, I claim I love it!!

As a student, my life was fully governed by the need to be cool and the fact that I was tomboyish helped me achieve this target. At that time, I didn’t know the importance of what I was going through, and unfortunately most people I was associated with also didn’t realise it. One would say this is expected but that is where one expects elderly intervention. Today I wish my teachers had paid a little more attention to what we were doing. Barring a few who have helped shape me, most teachers taught their subjects well and that’s where it stopped. I wasn’t prepared for the outside world and I left the confines of my undergraduate institution almost as naive as I entered it. Nowadays, I see a change in the students. Many students I have had the privilege of interacting with seem to come with dreams that are practical, and are fueled with desire to succeed, while many others seem to be completely clueless about their sheer existence. The easier job is to support an existing dream, help nourish it and forge a path for the student to tread. The task of envisioning a future for someone, establishing a road-map – not just for success but for mere presence, convincing that each person has a purpose and that it is imperative each one of us finds it and fulfills it, is more demanding and mentally draining.

You may ask – am I glorifying myself?? Is this a note of self-praise? Before you think I am making myself into some demi-god, I would like to stop your thoughts from undermining mine at this point. I realized early in my switch from industry to academia that it is harder to make a difference in the lives of people who have few expectations from you. Your students are indeed a reflection of your work ethic and that there is a very fine line between showing off and sharing knowledge. Surprisingly, for a person who is innately shy, standing in front of a class and talking about the subject I love came easily and this made me love my job. Every class became a new arena and I was their squadron leader, and wanted to ensure that no man was left behind and each day was a small chapter for me, in my journey to prove to myself that I am worthy. I am astounded by the sheer willpower many of my students possess – some come from broken homes, some others have lost their close family members at a very young age, some come with such heavy responsibilities, that if it were me, I would feel bogged down all the time. My students certainly taught me a few things, but most of all they have taught me to keep a brave face always, to keep smiling through the day and take on everything with that classic ‘pinch of salt’. Kudos to the generation of my parents that gave this world the foundation to dream on and to the generation a decade younger than me, that is making sense of the dreams my generation constructed and realized.