On a path towards a Selfless Service
The purpose of my life found in the mid-life
It was almost three years ago when I had put a temporary or maybe even a permanent full stop to thirteen long years of my corporate work life and stepped into the academic world. I served as a General Manager with a leading automotive OEM and earned a handsome salary but was not satisfied with my job. My core strengths are in creative and strategic areas of intervention in a project, but I got dragged into operational activities for three years before I quit. I gradually made up my mind to not continue a corporate job, rather do something different but was not sure what it should be. My family members, close friends, and industry peers who are well acquainted with my capabilities and strengths, on the one hand, validated my decision to move to academics by quoting, “Shamit, you will make a great teacher,” but at the same time, they questioned, “Are you sure of taking up this job at twenty-five percent lower salary?” Yes, my move was rightfully questionable since I was up to something which was a reverse trend; the usual mental model of our society is that a job change has to come with a salary hike. Knowing that I will be less resourceful in this new career and not knowing how deep the academic waters were, I plunged into it but with the belief that I will be able to swim through it. Thanks to the wonderful leaders, mentors, peers, and my very dear students that I came across at ISDI School of Design and Innovation in Mumbai, I have fallen in love with this profession and life in this world. This truly is a blue ocean full of new opportunities that have allowed me to contribute, learn, grow, and, most importantly, find happiness in my day-to-day work. This journey that began in the year 2018 has multiplied my interests into academics, and as a result, I decided to pursue my Doctorate. That full stop was definitely a permanent one!
I am glad that through a course called “Human Values & Technology” at IIT Delhi, I am getting this opportunity to pen down my feelings of having found the larger purpose of my life. This purpose is not driven by my individual aspirations but by the feeling of joy I get seeing my students meet their aspirations. In my long stint with the industry, I always looked forward to that day of the year (1st August of every year) when promotions and increments were announced. Some years made me jump with joy on this day, while some made me sad. Reflecting on these past events, I now realize that the impact of those moments was short-lived. But last three years of being a teacher have given me more joy than my thirteen years of being a corporate professional. Satva means the qualities which give love, generosity, higher wisdom, knowledge, intelligence, forgiveness, etc. So Satvik is the divine qualities and helps us in going towards god [1]. I relate the start of my academic journey as a first step towards a Satvik goal. I want to dedicate the rest of my life to building bright futures for my students, inculcating human values to make them good individuals who can solve social and environmental problems. In the following section, I share deeper views on my perspective of “Serving for the Students.”
Three hats of a Teacher
Academic engagement for a teacher is not just a transaction of information exchange, it is much deeper than this. I think good teachers play three primary roles towards their students — the first one of course is of a mentor. However, as well-wishers of our students, we also play a role of a parent, and personally, I also look forward to becoming friends with them. A classroom provides an opportunity to wear these three hats, which further elevates the teaching experience for the teacher and the learning experience for the students.
The role of a mentor is a default role and a primary responsibility of every teacher. Planning curriculum, building lesson plans, delivering course content, providing learning resources, evaluating student performances, and giving constructive feedback define some of the significant activities of a teacher. Fundamentally, a teacher efficiently transfers knowledge and develops various skillsets (technical and soft) in its students.
A teacher’s role as a parent is crucial for the successful execution and regulation of the first role. Parents provide unconditional support towards their children; they encourage them to perform better and hold them away from wrong pathways. A teacher is also a well-wisher of a student with a mission of building a talented workforce and good individuals. A teacher understands the strengths and weaknesses of a student and makes students polish their strengths and reduce their weaknesses.
While the most critical hat is that of a parent, the most important hat of a teacher, the hat I value the most is that of a friend. I believe that the first principle of teaching is developing a bond with the students, a bond that builds trust between these two entities. The stronger the bond, the easier is the learning.
Farewell of the Graduating Batch
In the first section, I described my entry into the academic world, here is a deeper look at my responsibilities. I was hired to lead a four-year undergraduate program called Strategic Design & Management (SDM). This was a new but deserted program at ISDI, and it had very little awareness within and outside the school. The program is also a relatively new field within the design education space in India. When I joined, the first batch of this program, then in the second year, had only three students of the total 150 students in the cohort. It would have taken a lot of courage for these three students to choose a program without much information and the pressure of their peers choosing other widely known programs such as fashion design, product design, communication design, and interior design. Consequently, these three students had never settled in the discipline even when they came to their third year, the year I joined in. There was no dedicated faculty for this program and the second-year classes were sometimes combined with the classes for other design programs. The learning experience of students was thus compromised. Students from other programs always questioned these three students on their choice of the program; it is hard to imagine what state of mind these students would be in.
To lead a new program with only three students was always going to be challenging. The program had to be built from scratch, and the pressure to increase the visibility and strength of the department gradually kept rising. I spent four full semesters with my three students, playing all the three roles I mentioned earlier. I had to empathize with them, earn their trust, and develop a positive learning mindset. The students responded brilliantly and their work started speaking for the program. Their performance improved, their confidence grew, and they secured good placements (with companies like Deloitte, Infosys, and TCS). This created a great launchpad for the program and the department strength grew to 54 students in two years. Moreover, now I also have another large pool of students from product design to mentor and care for.
Being a new entrant to academics, I guess this case might sound usual to any teacher. However, I have gone beyond my classroom responsibilities to drive this positive change in my students. I like to care for them, I like to solve their problems, and in return, the respect I get from them is priceless. Their happiness is the fuel that keeps me driving. I do not remember the happy moments of my professional life, but one incident from June 2020 goes into my lifelong treasure. In a farewell function of the first SDM batch (held virtually), one of these students quoted (weeping), “We were orphans until Shamit Sir came in to lead SDM...” That moment was one of the best moments of my life, and my feelings were at par with the feelings when I had become a father.
I am not sure if this service qualifies as Satvik activity; actually, does it really matter how do we categorize it? The last three years have shown me the guiding star of life through the following insight — my happiness lies in the happiness of my family and my extended family (my students), and I have decided to dedicate my time, knowledge, and efforts to pursue this happiness for them, unconditionally.
References
- Satvik-Rajasik-Tamasik Personality and Meaning in Astrology, Retrieved December 24, 2020, from https://blog.astrologylover.com/satvik-rajasik-tamasik-personality-and-meaning-in-astrology
