| Nov. 16th, 2009 @ 08:14 am Me and my education |
|---|
Current Mood:  calm
I have lot of fascinations for Eklavya. To me, he remains a proof of what one can do against all odds. Imagining times of that era, I can imagine how he would have learned to build his proper bow on his own. Surely it would not have been easy. Trying find appropriate branch from tree, adjusting its height, its angle, spooling string and hurting self many times in this process before coming out with the right bow perfected for his practice. What about arrows? Finding sticks and scrubbing them to get apt length arrows for the bows. Getting instrument itself would have taken a lot of time, energy, dedication and passion. And that's not all. Then learning about postures, positioning of arms, learning to aim, hitting it off direction before hitting the bulls-eye. It surely would have been a long journey filled with despair in beginning and concluding with joys of achievements. What kind of patience that kid must have exercised to get it all right without monitoring of a teacher. And yet he willingly offered his thumb to Dronacharya as price of observing lessons from his classrooms. How much would have that thumb mattered to him? Would it have stopped him from excelling further? I doubt that. Though I haven't read further about it in history books, I feel he would have continued his journey with same intent using the other arm instead.
I have been lucky to have teachers better than Dronacharya. They haven't been rigid and discriminatory like this guy. That's the best thing I like about my professors. Last week I visited them and with that, I visited all of my fond memories of past. I have had wonderful times in all of my schools and colleges I was affiliated to but then National College was really special. I did 5 years of education from that college (junior college, BSc in Physics cum Compie). Honestly speaking, National college would not have been my first choice at time of admission. Why? Not because of some weird ratings from some random survey folks etc. But because of people talk. Few trusted sources used to say that Bhavans, M V L U, Mithibai etc are better college than it. I would have believed those words of mouth but then after seeing two products side by side at work during 2002-2004, one from National College and one from Mithibai college, I realized how wrong were those claims. Anyways, nothing to generalize based on just one observation :)
When I took admission, probably I wasn't a happy boy thinking why am I here and not there. But as time progressed, the kind of assistance I received from my teaching and non-teaching staff, it surely made me a very satisfied boy. We weren't in great financial shape during those times. Every single penny mattered to us. National college fees were lowest compared to other colleges. It's a good college run by trusts and not for profit. There were many good schemes to assist the needy ones. I got more than 10 books (worth 2000 bucks) on book loan from library for just rupees 100 which was refunded as soon as I returned books to them. For each year between 1995 to 1998, I got my books on book loan from library thereby saving more than 2000 bucks every year. And these were not the torn books types. Many were fresh purchases by library and most were in good shape with not more than 2 years old. Would you believe that my librarian allowed me to take foreign publication books in my final year of BSc. These were the books that our professors used to suggest for reference and I was able to get all of those under book loan. Those which I could not take under book loan were then lend to me on regular basis by Professors on their account. My BSc stream was slightly funny. It was called Vocational Computer Application. Under this stream, we were to major in physics but our degree would also spell 'vocational computer application' thereby giving us some weightage in comp science field. We were the first batch to undergo that stream and I was very happy to get admitted to it knowing that it would help me find a good job in comp science. In fact, I was so worried about getting job that I started ignoring physics and started focusing only on comp subjects.
And so began my routine of spending more and more time in library reading whichever comp books were available. Many times, i did borrow books out of favor from librarian or by requesting prof to get it on his/her account. Each one of them would come to library, 3rd floor from 1st floor along with us to get the requested books. If I were still short of any other book(s), I would then go to Asiatic library, Churchgate in evening to spend couple of hours in reading there. I used to take notes in my notebook and write programs on paper, would execute them in my memory or on paper. Then finally one day I requested Dinesh Sir, my professor if I could get extra hours in lab to which he agreed. He would let me stay in lab with other batch students and many times he stayed beyond office hours just because I kept insisting "just 15 mins more". He never showed any irritation and would be very polite in saying - "Please Peeyush, lets do remaining tomorrow". For certain subjects such as Artificial Intelligence, Enterpreneurship and SQL, he arranged for faculties from outside just to ensure that we wouldn't miss out on these topics. He arranged for our summer internships for two years at various places. And things just didn't end with end of my college years. My professor supported me with 5 books on his account for more than 6 months after I had left college when I approached him again for assistance.
Eklavya remains my inspiration but I feel blessed to have got what he could not. I got into a real good college and great professors to whom I owe every bit of me, whoever I am today. I can never thank them enough, I can never repay them back. I saw them doing the same bits for students of today as I was sitting in my college with them for more than 5 hours in last two days.
Dear God, may you bless my teachers for in them I have seen and felt you :)
2007 - http://peeyush.livejournal.com/362887.html
2005 - http://peeyush.livejournal.com/145569.html
2004 - http://peeyush.livejournal.com/53240.html
No entries in year 2006 and 2008 |
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
peeyush's journal
