Teaching - A Deeper View

                                                           

Thought of writing this after getting  done with that book chapter and patent filing tasks that are waiting in the queue in my to-do list. Was confused which one to pick up, book chapter or patent… When the neurons are so confused and dolo 650s are helping you to be alive, and you don’t have the habit of sleeping beyond 5AM, the level of confusion increases and you end up doing nothing. I don’t fret for that, as taking a break will increase my speed and I will surely be done with my to do list! (hoping so 😊) Yeah till now, no match has happened with the title, so will start now.

I feel teaching is getting redefined every day. Sometimes, I doubt if I will be able to teach for another 20 to 25 years. Every semester, I feel changes in many dimensions in terms of, students level of cognizance, many challenges in making students listen to you and many more that I am not able to count now.  And yeah with the increased number of YouTube lectures given by experts, its becoming tough to compete. You have to overlap with that Stanford Professor and deliver content better than him/her  to make students listen to you.

And yeah, the responsibilities of an Engineering student are also redefined. He/She has to take internships from a company, do Online courses, do projects , join Tech clubs and He/She has to listen to your lecture too 😊

On the other side, SRM has already started recruiting faculties having PhD from IITs and IIITs, maintaining the identity has become even more tough.  When I joined SRM there were 96 faculties out of which 16 PhDs were there including me. Today the count has become 50/50 ratio with the total population of 140 I guess. And in 2020 to be an Assistant Professor, PhD is must so it’s no more a pride being a doctorate!  Today you can’t survive if you are not balancing teaching, research and many other additional roles given to you. You have to stay ahead from the crowd or stand in that unique subset.

But the good news is that you can still  face these challenges with the big smile on your face.  Upgrading ourselves to the technology and delivering contents to the students with the updated knowledge, innovative way of thinking will make you feel better amidst all these challenges.  I always remember my roots. Thanks to the exposure given to us by my Anna University gurus, Dr. Ranjani Parthasarathi, Dr.T.V.Geetha and Dr.Madhan Karky. We were made to think, analyse and do our job with responsibility.  I don’t have any fear towards IIT faculties joining every year in SRM as we were exposed to IITs during our tenure as Junior Research Fellow at Anna University while working on the DST project 10 years back. Had I missed joining there I  don’t know what would have happened!.  

I feel a teacher should also be a studious student. My god, you should not visit my room before  the lecture hours. My  PhD scholars  Ms. Anita and Mr. Srinivasan who are also faculties here at SRM also share the NLP lab which is my room with me these days. I took this decision  so that I can pesture them anytime regarding research. I screw them up like anything but still they put up with me with enthusiasm. Should write on them soon 😊 . Yeah coming back to the visiting thing, We all three will be immersed inside the PC or book like anything. If I ask Anitha, what did you have for breakfast, I can only  expect a JAVA related answer as she will have JAVA class the next hour. The positive thing is that I will get the answer after the class is over for sure 😊. I am no exception before my Design and Analysis of Algorithms (DAA) class.

The ground reality is that such a preparation is required to give a contented lecture. I should talk about DAA here. I just loved this one and this time is the first shot for this. Initially it looked like a tough juxta puzzle. I did not like it as it had much of mathematics, time complexities. It was so yucky . I have to do justice as many data structures students (my previous sem students ) sent me messages that they  opted me for this subject believing that I would take that tough subject well. Trust is the strongest component on earth which keeps you going even when you are blind folded. I trust people a lot when it mainly comes to my family and friends. You can’t let go of them for some silly reasons. The same I had to do with DAA. Just because I hate mathematics I cant let go of my students and destroy their trust. The only way to enjoy life is that to love what you hate. That’s what I did . Spent extra hours , early monings meant 5 AM  earlier but  this semester it meant 3 AM most of the times. And yeah it gave a complete feeling. I  hope students too have the same feeling. Recently I confirmed that. We have assignment and quiz components that are part of internal marks. I told them I would give full marks for all. All they need to do is that to add value to the scores given to them   by doing some good projects thereby adding value to themselves. The idea behind is to kick start their responsibilities towards getting placed in a good company which is only possible when they have a good profile.  Yesterday, I sent my drive link to submit their project reports and screen shots and I was happy to see many students adding value to themselves despite the promise of full mark given to them.   I just don’t believe in being strict or compelling them. And yeah it does not work with the current generation teens. They feel happy when they are respected. And yeah, they are truly professional and they expect only a good teaching from you!

Hoping to emerge as a good teacher and change to the frequently changing system and feel satisfied even on my last day of work 😊

Thanks for reading till the end 😊

Subalalitha