Loyola & CET Bloopers

College life along with school life provide us with a treasure horde of myriad memories which we can carry around for a life time. While school provided us a secure studying environment, the life at CET introduced us to the unchartered areas of student life. Strikes, gheraos, demo days etc. where terms which we did not even come remotely face to face with during our school days.

While students are the uncrowned badshahs of bufoonery in both school and college, the Professors are the silent rajas of comedy. Read on below to find out why.

Our Chemistry teacher takes us to the lab to demonstrate a few experiments. On the walls of the lab are potraits of great chemists like Lavoisier, Mendelev etc. After showing those to us, he says "One day......I will also hang there", meaning, one day his fame would also make his potrait hang on those walls.

The same teacher, during the demonstration of the Golden Spangles Test, warns us to pour out the chemicals into the test-tube slowly. "Dont pour..pouuuuuuuuuuuur".

Also by him were "Take an empty beaker full of water" and "Take an iron rod of any metal".

Our Chemistry teacher was also the main organizer from the staff for the Loyola Youth Festival. While revealing the outcme of one event there was great tension between GG and JJ house as to who would come out first. While revealing the winner of the 2nd place, he announced "And the 2nd place goes to...........GJ House", leaving both the house supporters wondering as to who had actually won.

Our PT Sir on the rehersal day of our school sports meet. "The 24th Annual Loyola Sports meet will delcare the Chief Guest open".

The same PT Sir telling the boys of a class to seperate into 4 groups. "Seperate into four halves".

At CET, the level of English usage by the professors was taken to the next level. The examples below are courtsey the Orkut community of CET, and, most contributions are by boys of that rocking department - The Royal Mexx - those who experience the royal life at college :-). The examples below also include some non-english related bloopers also.

The words of a lecturer who wants to explain that there are also other persons in the college who share the same name as his "I am not the only "Rakesh" in this college.....there is also yet another "Rakesh" but that is not me"

How about a Prof in Mech asking Rohit after his seminar on "Inter continental Ballistic missiles""oh ok...seminar kollam...but tell me its daily use" . A visibly shocked Rohit replied"Sir...it can be used to bomb countries". The Prof replies "Oh..Good, good" !

Or the time someone went to Ayyappan sir a.k.a Oxford Ayyappan for change of elective. He was initially refused on the famous 'technical grounds'. Then he actually applied pressure via some uncle or cousin or somebody to which the Sir replied "If you have hold, then don't make anonymous calls"

(read) "If you have influence, then don't come with any recommendation"

Ayyappan Sir asking a student on him discontinuing the course:"So you discounted???"

One lecturer of machine design desperately requesting the Mech students to write an assignment"Please .....shall i give one assignment.......just one.......its enough if one person writes it on behalf of the class"

Some one was flying paper planes in the class..and this lecturer comes in yells out.."aaaro Arrow vittu"

Ayyappan Sir telling "dont throw paper through the window.. understanding people will suffer"

During Viva in Electrical Machines Lab

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Instructor: Can u tell me why the Induction Motor Torque-RPM curve falls down at high RPM?

Student : Gravity sir :-)

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Once Oxford Ayyapan was taking his class. He started having a suffocated feeling inside the class , the reason being, closed windows. On seeing this, oxford aiyyapan yelled,"Open the windows,let the air force come in"

Ayyapan became a grandfather. Look how he describes it.

"My daughter born again. The boy is a girl"

One royal mech at strength of materials lab was asked @ viva

q-what is hooke's law?

a-stress by strain.....

.q-what is stress?

a-hooke's law into strain..

q- %$#@&^

How about this from a Mech student

This happened in HE(heat engines) lab. The students had to write their names(full name) on a piece of paper and read it out loudly and walk away ..All of us wrote the full name and read them out one by one . I jus read out my first name (vishal). lab prof was shyamlal sir , and when i did that , he shouted "WHAT IS THE BALANCE".. he wanted my surname

In Computer Science class, where the HOD was taking classes

Someone flew a paper plane in the class which happened to whiz over our miniature 4feet 3inches tall HOD. Furious she turned round and asked : Aaranu ivide rocket vidaaru? (who flies rockets here?). pat came the reply : VSSC

Another blooper from Ayyappan Sir

When a student went to him to get the marks of MD corrected...his response was.."Once put is put. Now no more puts"

This is another one as narrated by a Mech guy (God , they truly enjoyed college life!)

We were having our "Material Science" class in S4 by Mr. X and he was just tellingus abt the books for that particular subject for which one of my friends added " Sir, How abt the book called 'Rim Poche'?"Hang on! he replied,"I guess Rim Poche is okay but not better than Kanitkar"We wished he would hav seen "Yodha"

This is one of my favourites, an anecode from yet another Mech guy

Scene: Our sir, sorry i dunno his name, was taking class while my friend 'luke' catches his attention by doing something. He comes running and asks him his name. luke replies "luke". he runs back to the board and writes "LUCK" and reads it out Luke!!Ooooh, u shud have been there to see the response of my classmates!!

Our Civil Engineering Staff Advisor came asking for Darren Desalphine. He says "Where is Darren....". He is not able to read the surname properly. He pauses for a long time and then approximates the surname and spells out "Where is Darren Deshpande?"

The next scene is that from the drawing class. One of the guys draws the plan of the house without showing the steps. The lecturer, I think Thundu Rajan, sees this and asks "De De..ithenthonnade..PT Usha-de veedo? Steps onnum vende?"

CET life is full of such interesting experiences for the students, not forgetting the innumerables strikes and gheraos by the students expressing reasonable , and sometime, unreasonable claims. For example, read below:

I remember my brother who was from CET Mech and a 1993 batch (reffered to as the Golden Batch, since that passing out year was the Golden Jubilee Year for the college) telling me that their batch had formed an association named 'MAFIA'. While inside the college premises the full-form was "Mechanical Association for Inncoent Activites", once outside, the full-form became "Mechanical Association for Immoral Activites".

It was the year of the Bombay bomb blasts, and, the next day all the major dailies came up with the headlines 'Police claim MAFIA behind bomb blasts". Sensing this as the best opportunity, the Mech batch next day armed with many banners marched "On strike...On strike...MAFIA-kku Bombay bomb blast aayi oru bandhavum illa", referring to their so-called association.

It is said that the lab machines at CET are some of the most efficient machines in the world. General Motors and Ford Corporation are said to have been amazed at the efficiency levels of such machines at the automobile lab. Every year when the students attend the lab exam, they are asked to measure the efficiency of the machine. And, goodness gracious, the efficiency measured by each student turns out to be the exact value as measured by students of the previous batch, and the batch which preceded that previous batch, and the batch which preceded that preceding batch and so on. Even the individual values taken at different periods of time turn out to be the exact same, thus forcing the industrialists to conclude that the machines at the CET labs are truly out of this world!

Me and my classmate Kiran a.k.a Kurudan used to find the Survey Lab exam a really tough one, especially getting the correct readings on the survey instrument . On the exam day, after a few miserable attempts, I went to the teacher-in-charge and said "Teacher-e..ente kanninu entho kozhappam..Optical nerve-inu entho kozhappamundu..". Teacher-ku pettennu daya thonniyathano ennariyilla , avarenne matti irutthi reading edukkan sahayicchu. Ithu kandu ente bhagya deivathe kanunnathu sahikkanavatha Kurudan ente athe adavu prayogikkan nokki. Pakshe avanu kittiya uttharam " Ohh..kanninu kozhappam alle..aduttha thavana suppli pariksha ezhutham..kannu athinu munpe shariyakum.."

P.S: When I was doing my MBA at REC,Trichy many of my classmates from Tamil Nadu used to laugh and tell me "Your college is so different". All I could manage as a reply was "Yes, but your colleges there are all the same".

Raking in the HOTS to call the Shots

A news item on CNN-IBN today stated that the CBSE Board has decided to implement H.O.T.S. For the 10th standard Board exam this year, they stated that very subject would be based on this new design in which the question papers include 10% of very short answer questions and 20% of questions to assess H.O.T.S. Also read it here.

H.O.T.S according to this official website is Higher Order Thinking Skills. It is a complete general thinking skills program for helping students in grades 4-8 who are disadvantaged in learning (a euphemism for the actual term "Low grade students"). The approach, they say, combines software with a sophisticated curriculum and Socratic dialogue (i.e. teacher asking questions rather than telling the student what to do) in small group settings. For example, instead of making the student answer a question in one word, they "encourage" him to elaborate his/her answer and thus gradually enable him/her to improve the thinking process.

The HOTS software is described as a state-of-the-art interactive application. The teaching is through simple interactive games. Some of these games, like say, "Hangman" is something I have seen (and even played!!) in the computer labs at N.I.T. Trichy during the tenure of my M.B.A course. I must say that i found it to be interesting and even addictive. It involves guessing the letters in a word based on clues, and every wrong guess brings a man pictured in the game nearer to his execution. On guessing the entire word correctly he goes scot-free. This link in the website shows the entire list of games, all of which are interactive and quickly gets the attention of the student, much like the Hangman game.

Through such games, curriculum, training and support H.O.T.S is said to develop the following thinking skills:
Metacognition
Generalization
Information from Context (Reminds you of the CAT exam, eh? ;-) )
Information Synthesis

The organization itself admits that though the Socratic dialogue method is effective, it is also very difficult at first. Therefore, rightly as they say, the teacher should be organized, flexible, energetic and excited at getting students to talk. I guess they missed one point: Loads of Patience. Considering the fact they are dealing with students who are "disadvantaged in learning" and therefore such students need to be given both time and encouragement. This system of education has been implemented in many schools in U.S. and the results are said to be encouraging.

Now coming back to the situation in India, there is one reason why i posted such an article. It was ironic, to say the least, that this news item in CNN-IBN was preceded by a news item in N.D.T.V which should put our education reformers to shame. It was reported that at a primary school in Maharashtra, 50% of the class 7 students had failed a very basic test to gauge their competency in the English Language and General knowledge. Some even could not correctly write even their own names in English!!! And the school authorities say in the usual lackadaisical manner "Hum iske baare mein charcha karenge". Arre kya charcha karenge aap? These are students from the 7th grade for heavens sake!!!

The state of the primary schools in India is abysmal. No proper infrastructure (Remember the gruesome fire tragedy at the Govt. school in Kumbakonam around 2-3 years back?) , lack of teachers, pathetic text books and an indifferent management which professes by the laws of the babudom (Best depicted in the Malayalam film "Doore Doore Oru Koodum.. Starring Mohanlal). The situation needs urgent remedial measures.

How do you expect such students to become employable when the basic foundation of knowledge is not built properly at such schools? Teachers, especially at Government schools take leave requests at their liking without even paying the slightest attention to their job. The senior examiners even at established boards like the I.S.C and I.C.S.E are sometimes found wanting in the knowledge of the subject they teach. The syllabus in books remains the same even after a decade with no changes appearing in the pipeline (which seems to get longer and longer). Compare this with the education system in U.S. where in the 1960’s the content and syllabus of the entire school science text books were reviewed by greats like the Nobel Prize winning physicist Richard Feynman.

The Indian education system, which owes it origins to the Britsh Educational System, has not been upgraded unlike the latter. While we still brood over our pathetic primary education system, the West seems to be on the other side of progress with the same. While HOTS seems to be a pradigm shift in the teaching methodology of students in the higher grade/class what is needed in India right now is to call the shots on the basic needs of the Primary and Secondary School education system. Then we can bring in the HOTS.