Thank you all for your good wishes today on Teacher’s Day. Thank you for celebrating and acknowledging the role that we play in teaching you for these three short years, a time that gets over in the blink of an eye. Candidly speaking, I may not have always behaved my best with you – god only knows how many times I had to lecture you out of the classroom on random topics under the sun but it was done in the best of intentions. I only wanted you to not to make the same mistakes that I did when I was a student. It is so easy to get carried away by other things that you tend to lose sight of the important things in life.
As a student, it is not only your duty to make the best of facilities life has to offer you but also to glean as much knowledge from your teachers as you can so that you get the best education while your young minds are still fresh and capable of learning. Some may misconstrue this sense of push negatively but this is a small price to pay for setting you in the right direction, a realization which you may develop later on as you all grow older, just as I did.
As a teacher, it is not only my job to impart education but also to inculcate a sense of responsibility to your society in more ways than one. Discipline to yourself and the people around you contributes to your growing up into a mature adult and becoming a credit to your society. Punctuality, respect to elders, politeness, cleanliness, decency, growing a positive attitude and being helpful to one another goes a long way in developing your character as an individual.
Today, I remember a lot of my students with whom I have been fortunate enough to interact with all these years and maybe leave a trace of impression for the better in their lives. I had a student who studied with us only for a year and besides being the class topper, he was fortunate enough to get a job in the Indian Navy and he now sails around the country but never fails to call me up whenever he visits home. When he left the college, his mother had come to collect his certificates and when we told her about how good a student her son was, that he was such an intelligent boy and we are sorry to lose him even though he was surely leaving us for better opportunities, she had tears in her eyes – this is a memory which I have not forgotten to this day.
You said, I said