Dear Readers,
Welcome back!!! I hope you are all having a great day. It is a beautiful evening in Bangalore while I am writing today's blog. Today, I will be talking about an exemplary teacher Mr. Shankar. I had the privilege of studying under this great teacher.
Mr. Shankar is a lecturer of Graphics Drawing for engineering students. He had been a senior faculty in the famous R.V.C.E. Engineering college in Bangalore with several years of experience. He also has a coaching center in Prashanth nagar area. It is a very famous coaching center and engineering students from all over the city come to study here.
In the first year of engineering, students from all the branches have a common subject called Engineering Graphics. It is a mechanical engineering subject where we need to draw engineering structures in three dimensions. It was an interesting subject. But, it required more attention to detail and imagination. Also, it was a very tricky subject as we were only supposed to draw structures and there were no theory questions to fill pages. When my lecturer at college used to teach this subject I used to find it very difficult to follow him. He would say imagine there is a line in space. How would represent this line in three dimensional space using two points. He would then go on to explain the orthographic projections. I have always had problem in imagining and visualizing images in my mind. So, imagining complex engineering drawings was beyond the question.
After a month of futile struggle with this subject and getting low marks in my first internals I decided to do join a good coaching center. I came to know about Mr. Shankar's coaching center from some of my classmates who were already enrolled there. Now, this coaching center is unlike most other places. It is a one man army run whole and solely by Mr. Shankar. I joined his coaching class and was lucky to be enrolled as there are limited seats in each batch due to the huge popularity of this coaching center.
Although Mr. Shankar is a senior aged person but he is very energetic. He used to conduct classes for at least three to four batches every day. Each batch was around two to three hours in duration. Each batch had around a hundred students. But, he still extended courtesy to each student and addressed them respectfully and answered each of our questions with utmost patience. He was a brilliant man who had mastered this subject. He had invented his own methods and formulas for drawing. He never once asked us to close our eyes and imagine. Rather he would break the problem into separate parts and device a method to solve each part one at a time in a mathematical fashion. In short, I was thrilled to be studying this complex subject under this great man. The subject which was seeming impossible now suddenly was making a lot of sense.
There were a few incidents during the course of my six months of studying under him which made me appreciate his personality. Once during the middle of a session, we were interrupted by a student standing in the door way. He requested to speak to the lecturer. Mr. Shankar went out and spoke to this student. Since, I was close to the door I could overhear their conversation. The boy said that he was a poor student and he could not afford to pay the tuition fees. But, he was very interested to attend the classes. Mr. Shankar welcomed him immediately and asked him to attend the class and forfeited all his tuition fees.
I was also very surprised that many of my college lecturers used to attend his classes. I also came to know later that lecturers from many other colleges also came to attend his classes. Since, many of their own students were also in the same class. A few of the lecturers used to feel a little embarrassed. So, Mr. Shankar used to conduct a separate batch for these lecturers so that they would not feel embarrassed.
Since, Mr. Shankar was one of the most senior lecturers in the VTU university on this subject he was invited by the university for setting the exam papers and also to find out any problems with the examination questions. Once it so happened that a very tough paper was set by the university and a lot of students had obtained very less marks. There was one question of around twenty marks which was strongly considered as an incorrect problem with mistakes by majority of the students. This was brought to the attention of the university. So, they invited Mr. Shankar and few other senior lecturers to discuss about this question. One of the lecturers told the university board that this was an incorrect question and was impossible to solve. The University accepted their mistake and gave grant marks to all students who had attempted this question. So, many students were able to clear their exams and saved repeating another year. Later, Mr. Shankar revealed that he knew how to solve this problem and although it was a complicated question he kept quiet during the discussion in the interest of the career of several students.
During the last course of coaching an unfortunate incident happened. Mr. Shankar's dad passed away. So, we did not have coaching classes for a couple of weeks. The final examinations were only a couple of weeks away and there some important syllabus still left to be covered. All the students were left in a fix. But, Mr. Shankar sensed this and the dedicated teacher that he was, he came to the class with eyes swollen and wiping his tears and started conducting the classes even in that sad situation. He even politely answered a student's phone call during the class and explained to him politely as to why the classes were not conducted for the last two weeks. I was very stunned and awestruck by his humble and exemplary attitude.
Mr. Shankar used to learn new subjects every year in order to try and help as many students as possible. I salute my teacher from the bottom of my heart. My highest marks in engineering were scored in this subject. This goes to show that how a great teacher can make any subject interesting and give his students valuable lessons for life.
I hope you all liked this article. I would love to hear your feedback. You can drop me your comments or send me a mail.
With Love,
Gunjan
Welcome back!!! I hope you are all having a great day. It is a beautiful evening in Bangalore while I am writing today's blog. Today, I will be talking about an exemplary teacher Mr. Shankar. I had the privilege of studying under this great teacher.
Mr. Shankar is a lecturer of Graphics Drawing for engineering students. He had been a senior faculty in the famous R.V.C.E. Engineering college in Bangalore with several years of experience. He also has a coaching center in Prashanth nagar area. It is a very famous coaching center and engineering students from all over the city come to study here.
In the first year of engineering, students from all the branches have a common subject called Engineering Graphics. It is a mechanical engineering subject where we need to draw engineering structures in three dimensions. It was an interesting subject. But, it required more attention to detail and imagination. Also, it was a very tricky subject as we were only supposed to draw structures and there were no theory questions to fill pages. When my lecturer at college used to teach this subject I used to find it very difficult to follow him. He would say imagine there is a line in space. How would represent this line in three dimensional space using two points. He would then go on to explain the orthographic projections. I have always had problem in imagining and visualizing images in my mind. So, imagining complex engineering drawings was beyond the question.
After a month of futile struggle with this subject and getting low marks in my first internals I decided to do join a good coaching center. I came to know about Mr. Shankar's coaching center from some of my classmates who were already enrolled there. Now, this coaching center is unlike most other places. It is a one man army run whole and solely by Mr. Shankar. I joined his coaching class and was lucky to be enrolled as there are limited seats in each batch due to the huge popularity of this coaching center.
Although Mr. Shankar is a senior aged person but he is very energetic. He used to conduct classes for at least three to four batches every day. Each batch was around two to three hours in duration. Each batch had around a hundred students. But, he still extended courtesy to each student and addressed them respectfully and answered each of our questions with utmost patience. He was a brilliant man who had mastered this subject. He had invented his own methods and formulas for drawing. He never once asked us to close our eyes and imagine. Rather he would break the problem into separate parts and device a method to solve each part one at a time in a mathematical fashion. In short, I was thrilled to be studying this complex subject under this great man. The subject which was seeming impossible now suddenly was making a lot of sense.
There were a few incidents during the course of my six months of studying under him which made me appreciate his personality. Once during the middle of a session, we were interrupted by a student standing in the door way. He requested to speak to the lecturer. Mr. Shankar went out and spoke to this student. Since, I was close to the door I could overhear their conversation. The boy said that he was a poor student and he could not afford to pay the tuition fees. But, he was very interested to attend the classes. Mr. Shankar welcomed him immediately and asked him to attend the class and forfeited all his tuition fees.
I was also very surprised that many of my college lecturers used to attend his classes. I also came to know later that lecturers from many other colleges also came to attend his classes. Since, many of their own students were also in the same class. A few of the lecturers used to feel a little embarrassed. So, Mr. Shankar used to conduct a separate batch for these lecturers so that they would not feel embarrassed.
Since, Mr. Shankar was one of the most senior lecturers in the VTU university on this subject he was invited by the university for setting the exam papers and also to find out any problems with the examination questions. Once it so happened that a very tough paper was set by the university and a lot of students had obtained very less marks. There was one question of around twenty marks which was strongly considered as an incorrect problem with mistakes by majority of the students. This was brought to the attention of the university. So, they invited Mr. Shankar and few other senior lecturers to discuss about this question. One of the lecturers told the university board that this was an incorrect question and was impossible to solve. The University accepted their mistake and gave grant marks to all students who had attempted this question. So, many students were able to clear their exams and saved repeating another year. Later, Mr. Shankar revealed that he knew how to solve this problem and although it was a complicated question he kept quiet during the discussion in the interest of the career of several students.
During the last course of coaching an unfortunate incident happened. Mr. Shankar's dad passed away. So, we did not have coaching classes for a couple of weeks. The final examinations were only a couple of weeks away and there some important syllabus still left to be covered. All the students were left in a fix. But, Mr. Shankar sensed this and the dedicated teacher that he was, he came to the class with eyes swollen and wiping his tears and started conducting the classes even in that sad situation. He even politely answered a student's phone call during the class and explained to him politely as to why the classes were not conducted for the last two weeks. I was very stunned and awestruck by his humble and exemplary attitude.
Mr. Shankar used to learn new subjects every year in order to try and help as many students as possible. I salute my teacher from the bottom of my heart. My highest marks in engineering were scored in this subject. This goes to show that how a great teacher can make any subject interesting and give his students valuable lessons for life.
I hope you all liked this article. I would love to hear your feedback. You can drop me your comments or send me a mail.
With Love,
Gunjan
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