Tuesday, April 12, 2011

An earnest suggestion...My email to one of my teachers


SUGGESTION FOR A STUDENT EXCHANGE PROGRAM

Hello ma'am,

How are you? I take this opportunity to say that you have been a great inspiration to me these 5 years. Your courage, commitment and the hard work you do for the department and for the college has really motivated me throughout. Hats off to you ma'am for I cannot forget the times when you were so determined and in spite of  your sickness came and finished the Measure theory portions for us. You had always the best intention for the students at heart and you knew that we would all suffer if you had absented yourself.

Coming to the subject of this mail. I just recently have been thinking of an idea. You can ask me why I didn't think of this before. Of course thoughts like these don't strike me at the time when most needed. I felt it would be most appropriate if I share this with you. 

Ok here goes... In my 5 years of life at Stella Maris, I have had golden opportunities to listen to eminent lectures organised by our department. Annually, events like Math Zoom and Math 'O' Match stimulated the learning environment. But I have noticed that Paper presentation event which is quite important is always held last and by that time most of us go home or some of us stay and are just too tired to listen. Even if we attempt to listen the subject matter of some of the papers goes way above the head. The participants just bring stuff from the internet copy paste into slides and mechanically read it out. 

So there is reason enough to make the suggestion for a STUDENT EXCHANGE PROGRAM. It is not a competition nor is it a race but it is a congregation for assimilation of knowledge. Here are the general rules for the show.

1. A few highly motivated people should be in charge of the program, it may be the Integra members. The program I feel should be for PG and M.Phil students for they would have studied topics in depth and would be more interested to work on it.

2. Monthly or once in two months a group of our college students should work on topics taught in the syllabus for e.g  'Algebra in the real world', 'Problems in Analysis-tips to solve them," etc

3. An invitation should be sent to other colleges encouraging them to also choose topics for pure, applied and applicable mathematics. Of course the topics should be concept oriented and from authentic sources and not just from the internet. All the participants of the program can be given certificates at the end.

4. The program can be held for one or two days- may be a Friday afternoon or a Saturday morning where all the participants present papers. After every paper there should be a interactive questioning and discussion session. 

5. Only interested people should form the audience. The program should not be a force upon the non interested students. They will only be a distraction to the proceedings.Only students from a few institutions like IMSc, IIT, CMI, Anna University, Ramanujam which are involved in Mathematical research should be invited.  

The basic aim of the program is to spread awareness and also motivate students to pursue research in various fields of Mathematics. It broadens the horizon and also the student gets to meet like minded peers from various institutions. 

The other question is that 'Why it should be held monthly?'  The more the better. Of course those details can be worked as per the convenience of the department. 

Thanking you, 

Yours truly

Mirambicka. R

P.S. I will try to improve my signature and be a better person in future. I sign off with your blessings and good wishes.




--
Mira

"Modern technology
Owes ecology
An apology."
~Alan M. Eddison

3 comments:

  1. Ma'am's reply:

    Dear Mirambicka,

    Thanks for the appreciation and suggestion. It is fine to theory. In practice we had tried this and it didnot work ( a similar one). Still we shall try. Different students have tests and other exams at different times.
    Even the conduct of MATHZOOM and INTEGRA activities have become monotonous and dull. The paper Presentation was first event for many years. In the beginning we had 20 -25 presenters and it was exiting. In course of time it became thin and one particular year it was only 2. After that the next programme was scheduled 2 hrs later and did not know how to manage. We did manage but that is when we decided to have an event whose number of participants not known to be at the end.
    Student participation is what will encourage us to conduct more challenging programmes. Also faculty should be interested.

    Glad some students like you are interested.
    God bless you in all your future activities.

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  2. May people [including me!] just comment on these issues and forget about it. I am glad you tuk the effort to type ur opinion and mail it! :) Cool babe!

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  3. Hmmm...I am glad you are glad!!

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