Who can teach you to be passionate?

on 31 Jul, 2005 in b-school , ideas

I have seen several tens of teachers so far in my life. I rarely remember what they taught me in the class. All the formulae, all the theorems, all the circuits, all the models and all the frameworks… everything is forgotten. Whatever I am learning now, I am 100% sure that I will forget this too. If someone asks me “so what can you recall?” all I can say is “passion, energy, enthusiasm these people has shown in making me better.”

We had a wonderful professor for one of the marketing courses. Rarely you see such people in PG level education where emphasis is generally given to making us gain specialized knowledge. The prof. taught us marketing, but more than that he showed us what is ‘true passion and commitment’ all about. The entire course is a wonderful experience. People generally search for back bench seats so that they can sleep while the prof is ranting. But in this class not only almost everyone attended all classes but they even sat on the floor or right next to him to listen.

What made this overall experience a lifelong memory is the way the course is ended. The prof ran a 30 min slide show of random photos of innovative services/products. The most important thing is none of them seem to have used the complicated and mindnumbing b-school models but simple common sense and tons of passion. Then he gave us our quiz papers back. He started playing “the wall - we dont need no education” in the speakers. As everyone got their papers he asked us to tore them apart and throw them in to the air. The feeling of tearing up a quiz paper when the speakers are humming “no dark sarcasm in the classroom” can not be put in words. Suddenly everything became so clear.