Ohhh noooo, its 6:30 a.m., I don’t wanna leave my bed. God, please cancel the lecture I want to sleep a little more…but hey wait, its Govind Sir’s lecture (Prof. Govind Sowani) I cannot miss that…and with that thought I left my blanket and darted in the shower.
Well, this is the impact of the teachers in my college. To begin with I don’t have any one teacher who can be categorized as my favourite teacher and I love him/her the most. There are several who have dramatically changed our lives.
Business Ethics was one such subject that touched my heart. Certainly not because of CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) and CG (Corporate Governance) but because of Pratibha ma’am (Prof. Pratibha Pai). Her anecdotes were superb, brilliant!! Right from Mr. Sakaram the traffic police of Marine drive to her own first experience of cinema with her husband in a gaudy theater. She had multitudes of story to explain each and every concept. She had this great debate of what was media doing during 26/11? By saying this, that we are the no.1 news channel showing you first news of exactly where are armed force located and how and when our police force will attack? Is this ethical? Is this responsible journalism? What are you doing this by covering this? Those terrorist also have TV and internet. It just helped them to stay there for a little longer!!!
This is classroom teaching; here a true teacher wins, where her job is not only to teach what’s there in the syllabus but to move, shake you, to help you to become a better person. Her other stories ranged from security in office, the way you conduct yourself, the way you present yourself that matters, what amounts of information you reveal that matters. She has literally prepared us with the right attitude to behave in a typical workplace. Her visions are beyond a particular curriculum and finish it off. Her vision was to make a difference and she certainly did.
Lastly she always said, if this old crow (she) dies and someday you have to choose between what’s right and what’s easy, always choose what is right. My job as a guru is succeeded.
Well marveled already, then let me tell you about the great Mr. Govind Sowani Sir, he used to take lectures of International Finance every Tuesday in the 5th floor conference room from 8:00 am – 4:00 pm. And our college doesn’t allow us to use lifts!! You might be thinking that ways the attendance would be really poor. Yet every time I entered my class it was jam packed.
International finance was one subject that most of us had to take tuitions right, as the subject is new and complicated. How on earth are we suppose to know what is SGD, AED, GBP and CAD?? But sir made it so easy. In those rigorous sessions he used to give us so many sums, we became mad solving these sums, but once we got the hang of it we became arbitrage experts!!
Be it the old history of currency ranging right from barter system to current currency crises it sailed in his speech, his lecture were amazing, he was actually like an open book for us. All the facts were right in place. I cannot imagine a fifty year old person can give such great insights to the Euro crises, to Petro Dollars, to Vietnam War, to the different categories of currencies. And finally discussion about US, EURO, China the super powers in the currency market. Every piece of information was crystal clear. Thanks to his teachings. We all can mug, write the paper and forget but the teachings of Govind Sir has engraved in our heart. He created an aura of absolute silence where people can actually listen and understand what he says. Come on, who would take the pain of getting up and attending a super long lecture? But record speaks for itself. Sir’s lecture recorded maximum attendance.
Awed? These were just two teachers of my college. We had a visiting faculty, the Principal of SIES College Mr. Nitin Vazirani. He gave a new meaning to what actually people thought of Indian Management thoughts and practices!! His amazing project made us actually to research more on Gurukul, comparison of Ramayana vs. Mahabharata and many interesting topics like different castes and their origin, a group of Islamic students presented on Islam and teaching. And we had a group of Parsees who spoke about Zoroastrianism. Now we precisely knew what was their preaching. The entire subject was a cakewalk for us. He says most of the beautiful insights come from us. Where our research ends, his teachings begin!!
And there were many teachers who used Powerpoints and real life case study on Happy Dent to explain us various concepts. All the assignment which was given had all new meaning. For service sector we had launches. We had spent 2 weeks on humongous project of Entrepreneurship and had actually become mad doing marketing costing, strategies, ideas!! So much of hard work put in all together plus assignments on our head, to manage IAPM (Investment and Portfolio Management) and OR (Operations Research) which require so much of practice.
Our teachers were always there for us alwayssss!!! They took extra classes made sure that all OR (Operations Research) sums are in place. Thanks to Vinay sir (Prof. Vinay Pandit) who took Crashing sums right in the end which came for 15 marks case study. He was a savior.
Our teachers tried their best to give us QUALITY materials. In sem5 we followed mostly by our college notes which were the amalgamation of case studies with solution, Rishabh (Rishabh Publications) and part of Vipul’s (Vipul Prakashan). Thanks to Kripa ma’am (Prof. Kripa Carlo) sectors’ notes that sailed us in the Services paper.
They taught us tactics, strategies how to counter case studies, to fill our papers with diagram, to underline; such minute things that do matter in exam!!
Our Principal Dr. Mrs, Indu Shahani actually called our seniors who gave us valuable tips of advice to crack papers and score well. They came on Saturdays and gave us tricks to solve papers. We had one more challenge that we could not take supplements for which they calculated numbers of papers for us. For e.g.: 5 sides 5 concepts, 3 answers of ten marks should fit in 16 sides and last 7 sides for case study. We followed this pattern in the boards and results are in front of you. In Both TYBMS Sem 5 and 6, HR college created University Toppers.
I got 9th rank in Sem 6 and that was my personal achievement. Thanks to my college – H.R. College of commerce and economics.
It was a holistic learning process. They were not just to come, speak and leave. They came, stayed and conquered. This is the power of teaching. God bless these souls who have awakened our mind in the literal sense of the word.
— Anjali Khemani,
H.R. College of commerce and economics.
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