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One of the first things I learned from my medico wife soon after our marriage is that drugs should be taken in appropriate doses at appropriate times as prescribed by the doctor. Apparently, if a pill is of strength 250 mg to be taken thrice daily for five days, one shouldn't apply logic and take 750 mg once a day or worse the whole strip at one go.
This latter short-cut was taken by one of our colleagues in our Faculty Hostel at IIT KGP in the 1960s. He had high fever, nausea, headache and chills, and went to our BC Roy Hospital. The Chief there diagnosed it as malaria and gave him the standard medicines to be taken in a prescribed regimen for a week. This chap had never taken allopathic drugs earlier and was impatient and logical-minded and so went to bed after consuming entire strips thinking he would be cured in a day. Next morning his friends found him unconscious and carried him to the Casualty of the BNR Hospital. They had to pump his stomach out. And he had to stay at BNR for a fortnight.
Apparently there is a certain level of concentration of the drug to be maintained in the blood over a certain period...maybe the liver also is involved willy-nilly.
In our Andhra University at Vizagh in the late 1950s we didn't have Semester System. Nor for that matter at the hallowed Calcutta University. Subjects used to run throughout a year or two or even three in a series-parallel combination. Unlike in the Semester System where they are administered in heavily concentrated doses over a 3-month teaching period (leaving out exams, holidays and mass-cuts).
So our minds had ample time to slowly absorb the contents of the courses. And they sink deeper. It is 50 years now but I still recall the subjects we were taught, the books we followed, and the teachers who taught us (to the best of their abilities) over 5 years:
Here is a listing:
1. Sound....................................A. B. Wood.......................................H. S. Rama Rao
2. Electricity & Magnetism......S. G. Starling.....................................K. Subba Rao
3. Optics....................................Francis A Jenkins & E. B. White.....B. H. Krishna Murty
4. Properties of Matter..............Newman & Searle...........P. B. V. Haranath
5. Heat........................................Saha & Srivastava.............................V. S. Krishna Murty
6. Modern Physics.....................Semat..............................B. R. Rao
7. Electronics.............................F. E. Terman.......................................M. S. Rama Rao
8. Spectroscopy.........................E. B. White..........................................S. V. J. Laxman
9. Nuclear Physics.....................Evans..................................................B. R. Rao
10. Quantum Mechanics..............Linus Pauling and E. B. Wilson........P. T. Rao
11. Relativity................................J. B. Rajam.........................................C. Santamma
12. Statistical Mechanics...........Samuel Glasstone...............................D. Prema Swarup
13. Practical Physics...................Worsnop & Flint..................................All the above
14. Complex Variables.................E. G. Philips......................................Sangameswar Rao
15. Special Functions...................Ian Sneddon.....................................Sangameswar Rao
Suppose I ask one of my typical students at IIT KGP who underwent the Semester System to recall his Electrodynamics Course particulars after half a century. He would write:
Electrodynamics.......Class Notes (of seniors).......One grumpy old chap called gps
There was no semester system during the first decade of my teaching at IIT KGP (1965-75). But many of the students during that period won as many laurels and some have won Distinguished Alumni Awards and Honorary Doctorates from IIT KGP.
I was quite happy without the Sem System at IIT when I was young. The pace was leisurely and each subject lasted long.
When the Sem thing came, before I could finish my Introductory Survey, I had to worry about the Mid-Sem Exam Question Paper.
And, what is wrong with marks? Why convert them into Grades? I have no clue.
They only make things fuzzy....
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One of the first things I learned from my medico wife soon after our marriage is that drugs should be taken in appropriate doses at appropriate times as prescribed by the doctor. Apparently, if a pill is of strength 250 mg to be taken thrice daily for five days, one shouldn't apply logic and take 750 mg once a day or worse the whole strip at one go.
This latter short-cut was taken by one of our colleagues in our Faculty Hostel at IIT KGP in the 1960s. He had high fever, nausea, headache and chills, and went to our BC Roy Hospital. The Chief there diagnosed it as malaria and gave him the standard medicines to be taken in a prescribed regimen for a week. This chap had never taken allopathic drugs earlier and was impatient and logical-minded and so went to bed after consuming entire strips thinking he would be cured in a day. Next morning his friends found him unconscious and carried him to the Casualty of the BNR Hospital. They had to pump his stomach out. And he had to stay at BNR for a fortnight.
Apparently there is a certain level of concentration of the drug to be maintained in the blood over a certain period...maybe the liver also is involved willy-nilly.
In our Andhra University at Vizagh in the late 1950s we didn't have Semester System. Nor for that matter at the hallowed Calcutta University. Subjects used to run throughout a year or two or even three in a series-parallel combination. Unlike in the Semester System where they are administered in heavily concentrated doses over a 3-month teaching period (leaving out exams, holidays and mass-cuts).
So our minds had ample time to slowly absorb the contents of the courses. And they sink deeper. It is 50 years now but I still recall the subjects we were taught, the books we followed, and the teachers who taught us (to the best of their abilities) over 5 years:
Here is a listing:
1. Sound....................................A. B. Wood.......................................H. S. Rama Rao
2. Electricity & Magnetism......S. G. Starling.....................................K. Subba Rao
3. Optics....................................Francis A Jenkins & E. B. White.....B. H. Krishna Murty
4. Properties of Matter..............Newman & Searle...........P. B. V. Haranath
5. Heat........................................Saha & Srivastava.............................V. S. Krishna Murty
6. Modern Physics.....................Semat..............................B. R. Rao
7. Electronics.............................F. E. Terman.......................................M. S. Rama Rao
8. Spectroscopy.........................E. B. White..........................................S. V. J. Laxman
9. Nuclear Physics.....................Evans..................................................B. R. Rao
10. Quantum Mechanics..............Linus Pauling and E. B. Wilson........P. T. Rao
11. Relativity................................J. B. Rajam.........................................C. Santamma
12. Statistical Mechanics...........Samuel Glasstone...............................D. Prema Swarup
13. Practical Physics...................Worsnop & Flint..................................All the above
14. Complex Variables.................E. G. Philips......................................Sangameswar Rao
15. Special Functions...................Ian Sneddon.....................................Sangameswar Rao
Suppose I ask one of my typical students at IIT KGP who underwent the Semester System to recall his Electrodynamics Course particulars after half a century. He would write:
Electrodynamics.......Class Notes (of seniors).......One grumpy old chap called gps
There was no semester system during the first decade of my teaching at IIT KGP (1965-75). But many of the students during that period won as many laurels and some have won Distinguished Alumni Awards and Honorary Doctorates from IIT KGP.
I was quite happy without the Sem System at IIT when I was young. The pace was leisurely and each subject lasted long.
When the Sem thing came, before I could finish my Introductory Survey, I had to worry about the Mid-Sem Exam Question Paper.
And, what is wrong with marks? Why convert them into Grades? I have no clue.
They only make things fuzzy....
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Garbled Metaphors
"He (Rehman Malik) was definitely not batting on his own when fielding questions"
Garbled Syntax
"Like every woman reading this column, the story of the 23-year-old woman who was gangraped and tortured inside a moving bus in South Delhi on December 16 sickens me."
....DC, Edit Page, Thursday 20 December 2012
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