My favorite Class in College
I am a Computer Engineer. And i love my subjects. Having said that, i never really enjoyed any class in college when it was to do with computers to be very honest. I like doing practical work. Thats my nature. You can not change it. So that probably restricted me from doing a lot of work in class as such. And practicals would be taken care of in the hostel rooms rather than the practical laboratories. Again, fact of life, i hate working on someone else's time frame, a time frame mind you. Give me a deadline, and the work will be delivered. Do not give me schedules. And for the better part of my engineering it work rather well. But, i am not going to talk about the classes i did not attend or the ones which i did not enjoy. I am here to talk about the one set of classes i did enjoy.
In my first year where everyone is taught the basics of all forms and tools of engineering, i was introduced to Engineering Graphics, as one such generic tool of engineering. Never really understood why, but was thankful to God, for having such a subject. "Why", you ask? Simply because, there were no theory classes to it. All work was practical. All work was on ground. There was little drama and more substance. And there was true learning and thinking.
I liked the fact that the lecturer was tough on us. it was a difficult subject and people failed in it all the time. That always kept me on the edge of my seat in those classes. I had always liked, rather loved geometry. But what i liked even more was 3D graphics. Having such interests really helped my EGR cause. The whole idea of perspective and angles together always kept me interested. Never was there a dull moment in class. Never was there a calculation error like that in maths. The line and curves would settle into a perfect symphony of drawings which would simply have to turn out right if the basics were taken care of. The best part of it all was that we were always using the fundamentals of angles, geometry, a pinch of math and physics.
But challenges like in any other subject was there in this as well. One had to get a complete grip and control over the pencil. It was art and logic combined. Art! Yes, that too. You see, i was never good at free hand drawing. Despite that, to have actually done well and enjoy this was a greater high than anything else. The fact that i had complete control over the kind of pressure i was applying with the pencil on the paper, to come out with the exact shade of gray, as desired, was always an encouraging fact. It also helped that it was the first subject in which i actually scored above 40 in my midterms (more like scored at all :D ).
My favorite class in college was Engineering Graphics, not because i was good at it. But because, i learnt a lot, enjoyed working with the pencil and scale even more and was allowed to do so by my instructor.