Back To the School

Recently I went back to the school. I had to tell the students about my story (read success) and how I went about it. Well this is a euphemism for lecturing the students. I had to motivate them to study and work hard. Yes, I did that, any eyebrows raised?

The hardest thing to do is to tell the kids to study and still keep the lecture interesting. Hardly a day goes in a student’s life when he has not heard the same. When I was a student, I dreaded such ‘motivation’ lectures. But it is hard to resist the temptation of going back to your school and speak as a victor.

Now I prepared a lot for it. Tried to bring in humor in my speech, add some twists and turns and try to bluff the students that studies is the most important task they have to do in life.

For example I asked them, if they criticized corruption? Now the definition of corruption came out to be, not doing the work one is supposed to do. So I said if a student is not studying, he is corrupt. Poor kids!

The common thing I found was, the teachers complaining that the standard of students has declined considerably. Now they are more concerned about other things in life than in studies. Our time used to be the golden period of studies. I do not know if this is really the truth or the nostalgia suffered by all teachers alike. When I was a student, my teachers were always telling our batch the same.

But yes India has changed a lot in last ten years or so and is effect of globalization visible on the students. That is a point to ponder. If there is a change everywhere there will be some change in the students also.

All in all it was a good experience, at least for me. I do not know if kids could take something positive from it or not. But then it gave me an opportunity to go back to school and the good part was, not for studying :)

//Next post will have to wait for some days, I am going out of station//