time : somewhere in the noon...venue : department of mat. sci. in my college..occassion : term-paper presentation on some topic...well, as would befit me, i had copied the presentation on the topic "high-K dielectrics in MOSFETS"..or something similar...well, not only me...alleast 70 % of the junta had indeed copied...the only mistake i did was i did not take notice of the words CU on every slide, at the bottom right....while i was trying to put together the content on the slides which i had any-way understood from a colleague of mine in the electrical department who knew a thing or two about those devices, my prof. interrupted...."well, can u give me some references ?" questioned him.."sure" and i started to turn my note-book pages when he murmurred..."mr john xyz"..and i said "yess..s"..and "mr so and so"...."exactly", i replied...it was not difficult for the man who had completed his PhD in "electronic materials" from the Cambridge Univ. (remember the CU on the bottom right).....and it was all apparent then...i was the one caught..."why dun u guys put some efforts"..."aapne poora ka poora ppt hi utar liya"..."kam se kam kuchh slides to bana lete"..."the idea was not that u guys....."..and all that followed..."well what did u do before the presentation if u din even make the slides''...good question that...and i murmured an equally good answer -- "i understood the topic thouroughly sir"..and i waited in anticipation for the inevitable.."is it..good...then please depict the concept of so-so in a plot in a graph"...now who on good earth knew what he was speaking about..but then i had commited just a while back on my learning..i had to act..and act i did..i started to move towards the white-board..and i reached there!!...marker in my hand, and all the class looking at me (or my back)..i had to act...and i knew not even if there were 2 axes or a 3d figure i was intended to draw...and when it grew longer, i just drew our favourite childhood acquiantances. the x and y axes and a curve in the first quadrant..and stood there..i didn know what i had drawn and it was a strange feeling....
so m back with the after effects of the incident....it was not easy as it turned out....the professor seemed really adamant at proving a point to the students....as it was, I had attended just 3-4 classes (dun remember the course time...but it was no 8 am class..may well have been an afternoon slot)..had no marks to boast about in the midsems..(was much below the average actually)....i had a peer group who had had a bad presentation themselves, but had good marks in the first midsem and no attendance like me....that meant I was definitely the one risking the F the most..:)....so I decided I had to attend the remaining classes anyhow...and so did I....also, I submitted the report of the presentation as early as I could - all hand written and no copy paste - pulling out a night out when I had to travel the next night backhome in the UP roadways bus on the bumpy and dusty Kanpur-Bareilly road...I anyway always felt it was a lost game...but the instructor had different designs...as it was earlier decided at the start of the semester, there was to be no formal weightage to the attendance (only n impression as to who attended the classes, which is why I frankly attended the last few), and the first midsem was to carry 20% weightage and all....anyway, it was supposed to be an open book end sem....the syllabus was in abundance....I remember taking photostat of ateast 200 odd pages to the end sem hall...i mean all of us....enter the hall, and cometh the instruction that it was now going to be a closed book exam...hehehe.....hihi....khikhikhi....what about all those formulae which I had never learnt....i mean all of us....I remember looking at phadke and munna and our laughing in amazement and desperation.....I dont remember the events that ensued and only recall our gathering around the instructor at the end of the exam convincing him why none of us deserved an F....i mean it was the final year after all.....one thing was clear, it was going to be a very low scoring game....as it finally turned out, the course-average was less than 30% as I candidly can recall....so far so bad....!!
when we reached to see the end sem sheets, all was as expected - a low score and we all hanged at the same place...- but was it all....nah.. the instructor had not had enough of drama by turning the exam to a closed book one....he declared the attendance now carried 10% weightage and the first mid sem marks were in reduced weightage to 10% for final calculation....
lekin aaj bhi jab mere qaabil dost us course ke instructor ka zikra karte hain to unke zehan mein jazbaaton ka to sailaab sa aa hi jaata hai...professor sahab aapko to lagta hai idea hi nahin tha ki aap kitni badi wali bewaqoofi karne hi wale they....are khelne koodne dete na bachchon ko final year mein....
