PES IT... The first day at an undergraduate class... Everyone was extremely excited - excited to make new friends, excited to discover what really was in store for the next four years... And at the same time, everyone was a little but visibly disappointed to see no seniors "welcome" us (PES IT is known for stringent anti-ragging rules). But just then, a guy in his mid 20s swarms in from the back door towards the black board, takes the chalk with a steady pace, at which everyone falls totally silent. And he starts writing:
"1-sin^2(\theta) = cos^2(\theta)
cot(180-\theta) = -cot(\theta)
.
.
"
(I was almost sure it was some senior and I was curious how he would use those formulae in ragging us!) He writes a bunch of 4 more trigonometric formulae, suddenly turns at the class, and says with a high-pitched voice, "Do you want a teacher to be like THIS?" I join everyone to say the resounding "NO!". It didn't take me a minute more to realize that I was wrong in suspecting that he was a senior and it didn't take me even a week to realize that this Math lecturer was the one who I would be working with for the next four years. The daily (unofficial) morning classes of Math discussions were the ones I really looked forward to. The classes that changed the course of my life...
I will elaborate on the rest of the story in the next blog, but let me just mention, although I loved Math since childhood, the proof of infinitude of primes was the real love-at-first-sight with Math! Now I am making a huge leap of 5 years ahead: UCLA, my dream university, here I am, doing PhD in the subject that I love the most, Cryptography, the very subject this confoundingly-senior-looking best friend of mine, my superman-without-superman-costumes had taught me!
Sudarshan, you rock! Just 'pearl'ed to be writing here :-)
"1-sin^2(\theta) = cos^2(\theta)
cot(180-\theta) = -cot(\theta)
.
.
"
(I was almost sure it was some senior and I was curious how he would use those formulae in ragging us!) He writes a bunch of 4 more trigonometric formulae, suddenly turns at the class, and says with a high-pitched voice, "Do you want a teacher to be like THIS?" I join everyone to say the resounding "NO!". It didn't take me a minute more to realize that I was wrong in suspecting that he was a senior and it didn't take me even a week to realize that this Math lecturer was the one who I would be working with for the next four years. The daily (unofficial) morning classes of Math discussions were the ones I really looked forward to. The classes that changed the course of my life...
I will elaborate on the rest of the story in the next blog, but let me just mention, although I loved Math since childhood, the proof of infinitude of primes was the real love-at-first-sight with Math! Now I am making a huge leap of 5 years ahead: UCLA, my dream university, here I am, doing PhD in the subject that I love the most, Cryptography, the very subject this confoundingly-senior-looking best friend of mine, my superman-without-superman-costumes had taught me!
Sudarshan, you rock! Just 'pearl'ed to be writing here :-)
