Summer Internship with IITian’s PACE – Aditya from IIT Gandhinagar
Wildcard Entry for: – 4th August 2012
Name of the intern: – Aditya
Institute: – IIT Gandhinagar
Organization interned with: – IITian’s PACE
Bored at home, after an amazing year at Indian Institute of Technology, Gandhinagar as a fresher, I decided to search for an internship just to have an idea of what it exactly was about. The first year in college usually involves some basic engineering courses so I had no idea what chemical engineering (my branch) was, so I decided to go for an internship which would not require anything related to engineering.
This is when it struck to me that I could work as an Assistant Professor, at a coaching institute – IITians PACE, where I once used to study for my Joint Entrance Exam (JEE). Math being my favourite subject I decided to teach Math to the students aspiring for IIT-JEE. So, I talked to the concerned people and they allowed me to work with them. My work there included teaching students the topics that they wanted to learn, clearing their doubts in the numerous problems of mathematics and sometimes setting question papers.
At first I thought teaching or solving doubts would be easy since it had just been one year since I passed the JEE. But, my dear friends who think one year is not a long time, ask me what one year is! When I saw a couple of questions, I realised how much I had been out of touch and felt absolutely stupid. I read all the Math topics in the next few days, gained some confidence and then started the work.
Initially it was fun, solving questions of different types, using amazing tricks, and the best part was to see the students sit mind-boggled. I remembered the time when I was studying and the professors solved the questions so easily, that my hours of efforts used to seem useless. So, that gave me a lot of patience to make the students understand the same concepts again and again although I used to get tired. Eventually, after a month, things became so repetitive that I got really bored solving the doubts of students.
I was eagerly waiting for students to ask me for a class, as I had always wondered as a student how it would be to teach a class. One fine day, 8 students came to me asking for a lecture on the binomial theorem. I was so happy and excited about the class, that I didn’t sleep the whole night. I took the class the next day, the students enjoyed it and learnt something (hopefully) and soon I had more demand for classes. That’s the best thing a teacher can hope for.
Finally came the day which was supposed to be my last day at work. I had expected it would be like any other day with no surprises, but it turned out to be different in an amazing way. I won’t describe the day but I’ll just say what a few students told me. They came to me and said, “Sir, are you going today? We had made a list of topics that we wanted to study from you, now what do we do?” This sentence brought tears to my eyes but somehow I managed not to cry in front of students. But there was no way I could work since I had my academic session starting in a couple of days. Finally it was all over, and I was back sitting at home with nothing to do but so many memories.
Today, one month after ending the internship and coming back to IIT, I still remember the days I spent at PACE with students making some very good friends. Today I cherish all those moments, the scary feeling of not remembering anything after a one year gap, the doubt sessions, the solving of the same question at least 20 times, the unexpected sentence that I heard from a few students on my last day at work, and best of all my first lecture of Binomial Theorem. It is rightly said, you get happiness when you do something good to others. Now when I think about it, this intern actually had nothing to do with my branch (Chemical Engineering), but there are so many people whose aim was just to clear IIT-JEE and I am happy I could help them with their dream.
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