Saturday, April 17, 2010

Happy Hours

I was in NIT H  last week..and it was exciting and nostalgic to be back in a place to which i owe a lot.
Luckily Bhowmick Sir was also in college and he was staying right next to my room in the guest house. In one of our interactions i asked him that
"What should be the role of a teacher in contemporary times?"
Sir thought for  a while and answered after a brief pause...
"I think the only role of a teacher is to keep his students excited."

That's it...the simplicity of the answer baffled me...Just to keep the students excited and nothing else.
I thought a lot over that answer and i think he was absolutely correct.

We have attended 1000's of lectures in our education till now..can you remember a few lectures at the end of which you were left in a higher excited state?
My answer is very very few and these few lectures were taken by teachers whom i respect till now.

Excitement and enthusiasm are the basis to learning,without them the learning won't be effective and moreover it won't be fun.
So if a teacher can keep us in an excited state i think we can do wonders....

but with majority of our formal education done ...there is a little chance that we'll find some teacher who'll excite us for something.
but informal education will go on for life...so we can either get some mentor or may be we can be our own teachers?
Can we tell ourselves a few things which might keep us excited and hence feel the joy of learning and keep teaching ourselves to be a better person everyday.

I think we can...a major issue that i have come across with my own behavior is that... most of the times i don't find myself excited enough towards the things that i am doing.

Can i make my day so exciting that i love what i am doing and at the same time i am excited about the next thing that i am going to do.
There is no cribbing,no frustration ....just loving what i am doing and i am dying to do the next thing.

I tried to keep my self excited for one full day....

I got up early at 5:30am because i was excited to do cycling afterall it's a cool bike and i am the only one who has that helmet.
I enjoyed cycling because i was excited to do swimming at 6:00am plus i want to be like Lance Armstrong.
I enjoyed swimming because it is a very good exercise and it will make me fitter.
After swimming i had to get back to my flat but what will motivate me to enjoy cycling on the way back.
While coming it was swimming but now what...??

I asked my maid to prepare some delicious Aloo Puris...I know its high calories but if it's the yumminess of Alloo Poori that will get me excited..so be it. :P

I enjoyed the Aloo Poori and it was around 8:30 in the morning...i had loved the hours till that time.They were just so happy.

After Aloo Poori i had to read the autobiography of Michael Phelps.After all... that'll give me a new hero and a completely different angle to how i view Swimming....

Next inline was office. I tried to do my work well and tried to do it fast because it gave me a sense of professional satisfaction plus the leverage to leave early and again enjoy my cycling back home.

The day was in a highly excited and energetic state...I loved the regimen and was excited to discuss it with you...so that's why i wrote this blog,excited to see how you find this funda. I had to write it fast because it was already 11:30pm and i should have been slept by that time.
After all i had to repeat all this tomorrow.

Phewww....A day full of happy hours...how i wish to make each of my days similar.

Thanks a lot Bhowmick Sir....I'll definitely try to keep myself excited about anything that i do,after all these Happy hours are the building blocks to a Happy life.

Needless to say you are one of the best teachers as just like the thousands of your students you have got me Excited as well.

6 comments:

Unknown said...

Yeah .. Yes somehow we need to find our purpose to keep that self induced excitement going.. otherwise it dies down fast.. And though i totally agree with you that it is the energy amd enthusiasm in whatever we do, that makes it awesome ;)
BTW Kamlesh Mam is there in Mumbai and she is taking an Art of living course of 1000s here... Quite Wxcited about it :P

Anonymous said...

Well said Gaurav...but mostly we are bound to do the things that do not excite us at all.

Unknown said...

your blog entry was as exciting as your day must have been !!!!
wish all your days are filled with excitement, thrill, adventure and compassion to eventually make your life 'a happy life :)'

Anonymous said...

Thanks to Bhowmik sir for giving a point to keep in mind as I proceed.

Great you conveyed it.

@Anonymous: Excited state is always an unstable state if it's not your ground state. And, that's precisely what the writer is trying to point out -- raise your ground state to the energy level of those excited state, so that no other lower energy state exists for you to fall back to!

divya said...

Nice thought. I think this is what we need most to stay motivated.

@Abhishek: Well said.

Gaurav Vashist said...

@Vaswani --Only Solution is to this is to not be harsh with yourself,if you want to do something ,just do it.Try to get your mind,words and actions in unison...and i think then we start to enjoy things .

@Anonymous
Hello...why are you anonymous? I think abhishek is absolutely right and apart from that i would want you to read the BUT AND blog entry of mine. Gaurav didn't say anything well because you used a BUT. :)

@Rashmi- Thanks a lot ...A hearty Welcome to my new reader. :)

@Abhishek -Hmmmm absolutely correct...i want to raise my ground state..sahi yar.really there shouldn't be a lesser energy state to fallback to...

Ultimately correlate karte ho tum... :) shabash

@Divya - thanks a lot yar...yup agree Abhishek articulated it laconically.