Diary Entry #3: It’s time, let’s move on.

Meri Pyari University,

I think about the time before you were a part of my life. You showed me the meaning of love and gave me the opportunity to immerse myself in an endlessly passionate ride of teaching.

I always wanted to write you a love letter then. I knew it was a little silly but it’s just that I felt like expressing my love towards you. After all, you had given me so much.

But things have changed and now, it is with a heavy heart that I am conveying this to you but our interests are falling apart. We rushed into a relationship without understanding one another.

I wanted not just to teach but to learn from my students. I wanted to have classrooms without walls. I wanted the entire universe as a lab for my students. But I guess your ideas were different. You wanted to confine me and my students in classrooms. You wanted me to deliver boring lectures using silly PowerPoints.

You want my students to be “career ready”… minions who all think alike… never question the system… follow the rules even if they are archaic… to be just “another brick in the wall”!

I still have a deep sense of love and respect for you but the differences in demands and expectations is causing friction and our compatibility issues have escalated beyond repair.

Maybe parting is a way of life. Maybe after I go away, I shall long for you and my going away may force you to rethink. Please take time out and remember the legacy that you were expected to carry… where classrooms would serve as a cradle for new creative ideas, where we push the boundaries… falter at times, yes… but learn from our mistakes to reach an ever widening goal. I hope someday you wake up to a dream that you too had dreamt like our poets… “where minds are free and heads are held high”?

Nevertheless, I hope we reconcile one day and love again. Till then, my best wishes to you.

With loads of love,

Shreekant Pol