What is to be a Lecturer
                                       - Randhir Gautam

‘To be a teacher does not mean simply to affirm that such a thing is so, or to deliver a lecture, etc. No, to be a teacher in the right sense is to be learner. Instruction begins when you, the teacher, learn from the learner, put yourself in his place so that you may understand what he understands and the way he understands it “
- Soren Kierkegaard, the point of view for my work
as an Author (1848)


I love teaching. My aim of life is seeking to arrive at an understanding of meaning of life. Teaching is a noble profession. It gives the opportunity to touch so many souls in a beneficial and indelible way.Teaching is what gives propose and meaning to my life, and I cannot imagine myself doing anything else. I have no real interest in any career outside of university.

University is my second home. Even my bed room is full of thinking of my classroom. When I go to room after giving a lecture, I pass a sleepless night thinking what I ought to have said that I didn't say. I develop simple process of thoughts and concepts in order to make students understand. To be a lecturer is to develop a habit of theory building. Learning comes from doing. I feel so happy when I am surrounded by curious mind of learners. Intelligence of students is my gift that ultimately gives me power of imagination.


Moreover, sociology is what I do by nature, I have three degrees in the field (BA, MA and qualification
of assistance professor). Teaching sociology is the perfect calling for me, and it is a calling I will follow till I am physically unable to stand in front of students. I am pro-Gandhian by temperament so I feel guilty if I am not working. Teaching gives me ultimate source of satisfaction in life.


Lecturer and education
Thinking is an art which is done at a deeper level when you try to make understand after
understanding by yourself. If the listener is ready to listen, you certainly get to power to think more
thoughts than that of you usually think. Nothing is more bliss than a situation where you are engaged to produce the utility of your thoughts. Making someone understand something means to develop simplicity of your thinking process.

Lecturer is an academic rank in university. Therefore, role of a lecturer corresponds to university and its commitment for society. There is significant role of lecturer in university. At the one hand a lecturer is supposed to develop creative learning method and pedagogy on the other hand he or she has to develop the expertise.


Lecturer and profession

A classroom is a synthesis of the mind of lecturer, listeners and theorists. Teaching method of lecturer is to actualize the conceptions, to figure out the limitation of theorists and to develop application of thinking. Decoding reality and to make students to unlearn the constraints of scientific thinking are two important tasks of a lecturer.

The main task of a lecturer is to make students to unlearn the habit of “things for granted reality”.
Through classroom conversation a lecturer is supposed to teach the utility of reasoned thoughts in everyday life. I encourage my students to think beyond common sense and to practice the art of ‘thinking out of the box’ that is to say to be creative rather than experts. The first and foremost task of a lectureris to make students aware.

As far as the profession is concerned a lecturer should also work for the betterment of the growth of his discipline.To revisit the earlier theories and to look for the alternatives. Lecturer is considered to be privileged profession in all society.
We design Our profession.
I think a lecturer can never be out of students. A student is made of curiosity, doubt and uncertainty. Teaching is never ending learning process, where both teacher and student work together to learn and develop knowledge from each other.

A lecturer needs the ability to command over his subject at the one hand and to convey its essence
to students on the other. He is able to translate theoretical knowledge, scientific approach, good
judgment, practical knowledge, and wisdom into a significant knowledge of a subject that is fully
understood by the student. To be a lecturer is to have some skills such as Patience, passion, up to date information, situational analysis, positive attitude, strong control over class room, a professional reader and good evaluator.

For me to be a teacher is to inspire students to be critical and curious. My teaching is more about
suggestion rather to dogmatize the mind of students. Teacher is the maker of huaman. He is entrusted to impart to the pupils under his charge, not only that but he has to be insight about the pupils to whom it teaching and training. Lecturer is the one who acts as a field worker in the educational programme. Willing to perform for the benefit of the learner is the ultimate goal of lecturer.

I am going to end my essay with a beautiful quotation of cicero
‘History is truly the witness of times past, the light of truth, the life of memory, the teacher of life, the
messenger of antiquity, whose voice, but the orator’s, can entrust her to immortality?’

"We must enter the new period our own way and solve its questions for ourselves, because though truth, the radiance of reality, is universally one and the same, it is mirrored variously according to the mediums in which it is reflected. Truth appears differently in different lands and ages according to the living materials out of which its symbols are hewn.

Concepts and words are symbols, just as visions, rituals, and images are; so too are the manners and customs of daily life. Through all of these a transcendent reality is mirrored. They are so many metaphors reflecting and implying something which, though thus variously expressed, is ineffable, though thus rendered multiform, remains inscrutable. Symbols hold the mind to truth but are not themselves the truth, hence it is illusory to borrow them. Each civilization, every age, must bring forth its own.

We shall therefore have to follow the difficult way of our own experiences, produce our own reactions, and assimilate our sufferings and realizations. Only then will the truth that we bring to manifestation be as much our own flesh and blood as is the child its mother's; and the mother, in love with the Father, will then justly delight in her offspring as His duplication. The ineffable seed must be conceived, gestated, and brought forth from our own substance, fed by our blood, if it is to be the true child through which its mother is reborn: and the Father, the divine Transcendent Principle, will then also be reborn―delivered, that is to say, from the state of non-manifestation, non-action, apparent non-existence. We cannot borrow God. We must effect His new incarnation from within ourselves. Divinity must descend, somehow, into the matter of our own existence, and participate in this peculiar life-process.

According to the mythologies of India, this is a miracle that will undoubtedly come to pass. For in the ancient Hindu tales one reads that whenever the creator and sustainer of the world, Vishnu, is implored to appear in a new incarnation, the beseeching forces leave him no peace until He condescends. Nevertheless, the moment He comes down, taking flesh in a blessed womb, to be made manifest in the world which is itself a reflex of His own ineffable being, self-willed demonic forces set themselves against Him; for there are those who hate and despise the god and have no room for Him in their systems of expansive egoism and domineering rule. These do everything within their power to hamper His career. Their violence, however, is not as destructive as it seems; it is no more than a necessary force in the historic process. Resistance is a standard part in the recurrent cosmic comedy that is enacted whenever a spark of supernal truth, drawn down by the misery of creatures and the imminence of chaos, is made manifest on the phenomenal plane."

―Heinrich Zimmer, from_Philosophies of India_