Liking should determine profession

"Hawa se laya, hawa ko de do (you have brought it from the air, so give it back to the air)".

Well, these are not words from any song but these words were sung almost every day by our calculus professor and it became a very important song in our lives.

The words were aimed at teaching us a lesson or two in substitution which is so necessary in solving calculus problems. The common mistake made by students was to make a substitution and forgetting to cancel it. Thus the song reminded us that if we had brought something from the thin air, we had to cancel it.

Such was the unique way of our calculus professor. He would sing and dance in the classroom with the result that his subject was a mere "song and dance" for us and we would score full marks in the subject.

In contrast, we had another professor teaching us another mathematics subject. This professor had been a brilliant student in his days and had been a university topper. But as a teacher, he failed miserably. His lectures were drab and I could never understand abstarct algebra. I, and like me many other students, regularly failed in that subject.

Teachers have a very big role to play in shaping the future of the students. It is not a good or bad student, but it is a good or bad teacher that makes a world of difference. If you are lucky to have a good teacher, your concepts become clear and the subject becomes interesting. On the other hand, if one is unfortunate to have a bad teacher, the concepts are never clear and the subject becomes a burden.

What I am trying to convey is that people who have a real liking for teaching only should take up the profession. Teaching should be looked upon as any other job. This applies to every profession. One should take up only that profession for which one has a liking and not for pecuniary returns or peer pressure. Otherwise, you can never be happy in that profession nor can you do justice to the job.