The Few Students Who Made Teaching a Pleasurable Task for Me

 

The Few Students Who Made Teaching a Pleasurable Task for Me

I taught courses in structural engineering, both undergraduates and postgraduates, and also the basic course in applied mechanics in a private “Deemed-to-be University”, in its School of Civil Engineering. Over 20 semesters, teaching perhaps as many as 2,500 students, I could count on the fingers in my hands the students who left a lasting impression on me. It is not that the others were non-performers. Yet, performance was not what I was looking for. Many of them were, but they, in my way of thinking, learnt only minimally of what a university has to offer. Indeed, at least two of the students topped their classes. They did not make my list here.  I am putting my thoughts about the special students here.

These might not have been the best students, as usually measured, unfortunately by the marks/grades they obtained. What made them special was they made themselves my tools for teaching the classes better!

Many books on applied mechanics follow the historical development of the field. The oldest of the old were geometers, they thought through geometry in their minds, plane geometry at that. Every semester there were eighteen sections of first year students who needed to be taught applied mechanics. Most semesters I took two sections and in at least during one I taught three sections, each of 60 students. And this girl student stood out.

Most teachers teach the subject in two dimensions, in x- and y-directions and use scalar operations, at the beginning and then as they approach the first test for internal evaluation, they give the subject the vector-treatment. I too do the same but with a difference. I teach the fundamentals of vector manipulation (only to the extent it is needed for the course, which truth be told, is high school level) first, and then extract the required parameters and how to manipulate them in two dimensions.

When I was in the middle of the first lesson using scalar treatment for problems in two dimensions, this student raised her hand and asked whether she could use vector analysis for such a problem. I was shocked. Of course, one can, I answered and showed her how to do it. She already knew and felt comfortable with it! My nickname for her (I would not reveal the name of any of the students I refer to here) was, “The vector girl!” This name stuck with her too, apparently. She sent her wedding invitation as attachment to her email with her covering letter signed, “Vector Girl”. Tell me, isn’t that a tribute for which a teacher would beg, borrow or steal? It came to me unasked, some seven or eight years later.

One semester and like a bolt from the blue, the university asked me to set the end-semester examination question paper (and also the brief answer for each question) for the subject Transport Economics. I was zero in the subject, yet I could not say no to the demand. The time available was about three weeks. I borrowed the necessary books from a colleague, and as I went through it, I could identify strong correlations and make sturdy connections between what is given in the books and the things I worked on in a project, the first ever Public Private Partnership (PPP) project in the road-cum-bridge sector in India−across River Hooghly in the northern reaches of the Kolkata conurbation. The books validated what I did earlier and my experience in the project enabled me to put meat into what I read in the books.

The examination was found to be moderately difficult for the students, the average score coming in at about 60-65%. I felt OK. The next time the course rolled around I was told to teach the class, and I was prepared. There was one student, for whom I had taken the I year course who kept asking questions to get clarified on many points within himself. Then, he found out that I had not studied the subject at all.

He knew I was qualified to teach structural engineering courses, which grows naturally from applied mechanics. I gained enough confidence in me to take me as his mentor, in a loose sense. This, again, would have been about seven years ago. Then, he calls me now and then to enquire about how I am and other regular stuff, and is always willing to try answering questions in mechanics. Yes, he does, though he did some post-graduate courses in Project/Programme Management and is employed by a bank! We talk for no less than half hour each time. To him, my best quality is, I believe, that I listen.

The next three students I am going to write about are all girls (now young ladies). To some extent this makes me think that girls are quite open minded and are not afraid of challenges. For the sceptical few, I love all my students irrespective of their sex (sex is biology whereas gender is grammar, for the uninitiated and those who feel queasy). They are students and no more.

Let me explain. I have a deservedly bad reputation among students, not because of anything I have done, but what other faculty members do. You get what you deserve, and I am extremely careful while deducting marks. If I erred at all, it would benefit students. Hence, students fail in their efforts to out argue with me for ½ or one mark out of 50.

Now, one girl student came to me and said, “I wish to do my main project under your guidance.” I asked, “Are you aware of my reputation that I give tough problems and I am hard to satisfy?” This was in her final semester and she has not taken any courses I taught. This was bold. She brought with her two other boy students who, I knew, were tail-enders in the class. So, this girl was not only aware of my characteristics but also of the two students she carried. That is doubly bold.

I gave her a problem that involved doing structural analysis using a particular software that had captured high share of the market. That way, the project could make her “Job ready!” I told her how to access the software, and if she had any trouble capturing the nuances, she could come to me; maybe she did once or twice.

The input was quite exhaustive but she did not flinch. And, I had a surprise for her when she finished it successfully. I showed the analysis of the results of a similar structure designed by a German consulting firm. I consider one of the eight managing directors of that firm my Godfather in the field. She is short; yet, she hit the roof and let out a loud, “Whoopee!”

I cannot tell you who, out of the two of us, was happier. She lifted up my spirits so high, I was floating cloud high.

She had two job offers, one from Amazon and another from the Indian Engineering Major Larsen & Tubro. I suggested that from L&T she can jump any which way, as I knew people who leveraged that experience in ways not many recognize. Yet, she chose Amazon, and is happy with her choice. The word I used is “suggested” and not “advised”. Students at the age of low 20s tend to rebel against “advice”, but are OK with “suggestions”. I guessed she was one such and she proved me right. Such students ...

I was hardly ten days old in my teaching job and a girl student barged into my room and demanded, “Where were you all these years?” with probably a scowl on her face. I was stunned and asked her to cool down and explain the situation. Until then I had taken not more than half a dozen classes for her, an advanced class on steel structure design that included some highly empirical design processes. I was wondering how I would handle that. One thing did help me: I had done my M.Tech project on the same, in 1977-78.

To come back to the topic and the personality, in the first few classes it was a method of design that was drastically different than what the students had learned in their previous design course. So, I thought that she had lost herself in the concepts that underpin the process, particularly the assumptions that are made in devising the design process. 

No. She was tuned perfectly to what was being taught. Her question was why I had not come to the university a few years earlier so that she would have had better grounding in the basics. That was a compliment given in a scolding tone, delivered by a student to a teacher. I could not have asked for anything better. If I remember correctly, she did have a doubt and I cleared it for her.

Now she is a family friend of ours. She is in San Diego, the US, with her husband and their six year old boy and she has longer conversations with my wife than she does with me! From a student to a family friend! Whoa ...

There is this girl student who sat in the last row and I could see only the silhouette of her face as it was back grounded by the bright afternoon sun through the window. But she made herself visible by asking quite a few questions and seeking clarifications and she had a classmate across the aisle who also pitched in. She was not an extraordinary student in the sense of maxing everything under the Sun, but a well-rounded one (I do not mean obese!); she was an athlete too, played basketball and volley ball, the two sports I am keen and in which I know my ‘x’s and ‘o’s. She must have done well in her seventh (or, perhaps sixth) semester subject I taught.

I marked her out as someone different but not special. Was I ever so wrong in my life? No. She is special.

Upon graduations she sought out a teaching job in a high school (a government school, if I remember right). She was with them for a couple of years and gained the trust, and more importantly, the affection of her students. Her life situation was such that she did not have to be an earner in her family. This gave her the freedom to engage herself in her passion, teaching young ones.

Then she switched schools and again was the centre of attention of students. I happened to be in Chennai on the day of her Wedding Reception (the eve of her wedding, as it is these days). I was sitting by myself and joined the line waiting to present myself to the King and Queen of that evening, with a gift in hand. She noticed me in that conga line moving slowly as a wave form and whispered to who I learned later is her brother. He came rushing towards me, accosted me (truly, like a constable grabbing the arm of a suspect) and moved me to the stage. I was introduced first to her fiancée and then to her mom and dad, and all were so gracious. The best wedding reception I had ever attended. She is in one of those North Atlantic countries (Denmark, but not in Greenland, Netherlands, Belgium ...I am very bad in geography) and I am still in touch with her. Such a friend she has metamorphosed herself to from being a student of mine.

I must end this with two other students from my post-graduate students, and both left me with bitter aftertaste.  One of them came to me for her project (as all the other faculty members had rejected her; I was not aware of this). She also had a job lined up for her in a college as an Assistant Professor (some influencer, of course; how cheap the post had become). After eight semesters of undergraduate and three semesters of graduate study, she knew nothing. She did not know how to spot a total of five points on a straight line going from point A to point B in space. I had to show her how by working it out in front of her. Anyways, the School of Civil Engineering did not care whether she passed or failed. So, she passed.

The other instance of a student who despite my demurring strongly, wished to work under my guidance, and I raked my brains to come up with a problem−one that teaches while being solved. For whatever reasons, she changed her mind and went to work with another faculty member. I would have taken this as her prerogative and that would have been that, if only she had shown courtesy to let me know her change of plans. She did not do that. Let me tell you that she was a wonderful student, really beyond a teacher had a right to expect. Yet, she showed no maturity.

Thanks for listening−I am telling myself−to bits of my history as a teacher.

Raghuram Ekambaram