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Prologue
“To Thales the primary question was not what do we know, but how do we know it”
Aristotle
A Love Story
The first two years as a teacher, I spend the most time with the 2017-19 postgraduate batch. We had a secret romance going on between us; the class and I. They joined a day before I joined as staff in MCC. They finished their course in May 2019, and I moved from my job in December 2019.
Once they got the invitation for their convocation this February, I got many calls – requesting my presence there as they get their degree. I told them that I’m no longer staff. They said that they didn’t want me to come as a professor but as their relative. For some, their only relative. I couldn’t refuse.
They counted me as one of their classmates, yet, I enjoyed the respect as their professor. I’ve scolded them multiple times. If they had trouble; they never hesitated to come running to me, cry; or ask for guidance, as if to a friend and a mentor. Well, most of them kept me in the loop with all mischiefs they were up to. There were times when they stood up for me despite the consequences as well. I can go on about my love for that class forever.
After their convocation, one of them asked me, “Sir, we all got a degree, where’s yours?“
I simply replied: “You know right… I had arrears and left college only 6 months after y’all left!“.
I taught them one paper in their first semester, two each in the second and third. From Classical Dynamics to Algorithms and Java, from pure papers like Topology to applied papers like calculus of variations and integral equations – I’ve taught them all extremes of mathematics. All the “experiments” I’ve bragged about earlier, we did it together. We enjoyed learning together, had fun. They were seasoned critiques, to analyse the teaching and give constructive feedback.
Each semester, when I walk in for a new paper, they will be waiting for me to pull a new rabbit out of my magic hat. I never disappointed to keep their curiosity alive. My experiments were not perfect; but something offbeat, a break from usual lectures.
I was assigned with the paper Fuzzy Sets and Their Applications in their last semester. An absolutely easy paper; easy to understand and score in the end semester.
Mathematicos 