Letter to Students: Pramod Shrestha Sir
November 27, 2009
Dear Students,
We as teachers always get our inspirations from our students. Sincere thanks for your compliments. It will help me to be a better teacher. I will coordinate with poudyal sir about the enterprenureship lectures. I will be leaving for Manila on 29 Nov to deliver a lecture at an international conference on quality assured technical education. I will come back on 4 Dec.
I feel that institutions of higher studies should prepare students for leadership in civic engagement, public service, advocacy and social action (apart from your core technical field). It should also celebrate the life of the mind. I hope that this opportunity will help you to fulfill these valuable objectives of your life.
You, along with others (in your masters program), is embarking on a journey which will be exciting and frightening, a period of joy, pain, discovery, and disappointment. Your road to success is lined with many tempting parking spaces. Always remember that no college or university will ever much successfully educate you or anyone else, because the individual (categorized as a “student”) must come to their own fire about learning. Teachers can only inspire. They can bring knowledge to life – but all education (educere – to lead out [of ignorance, not knowing]) must come to being alive to the individual. If you merely passively await to get an education, you’ll never become “educated”. And the pile of (seemingly-irrelevant) dates, facts and figures you need to pass tests in your classes will soon fade from memory. The secret to happiness and success is not in doing what one likes to do, but in liking what one has to do. It’s always nice to be the best, but not when being the best brings out the worst in you. History of humankind is a real living story of life and death, love and joy, suffering and pain, the search and struggle for meaning…
As an inspiration when I have doubts I always remember the following Serenity Prayer (one of my inspiring prayer) – this prayer is also used by Alcoholic Anonymous:
“Oh God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.”
People are still trying to find that difference!
In any difficult situation, also remember the following three sentences that I hope will rejuvenate you :
“Between stimulus and response there is a space.
In that space lies our freedom and power to choose our response.
In those choices lie our growth and our happiness.”
(source: unknown)
Try to identify and define that space. The maverick psychiatrist R.D. Laing captured in the words below how failing to notice that we have this space kills our ability to change:
“The range of what we think and do is limited by
what we fail to notice. And because we fail to
notice that we fail to notice, there is little we can
do to change; until we notice how failing to notice
shape our thoughts and deeds.”
Real glory springs from the silent conquest of ourselves. People always say time changes things, but remember you actually have to change them yourself. We are like tea bags – we don’t know our own strength until we’re in hot water. An awareness of our freedom and power to choose is affirming because it can and will excite our sense of possibility and potentials. It can also threaten, even terrify, because suddenly we are responsible, that is, “reponse – able”. We become accountable. Think and ask – am I becoming response-able???? Challenges are what make life interesting; overcoming them is what makes life meaningful. It is difficult! But keep on trying!
You must be the change you wish to see in the world.
- Mahatma Gandhi
With warm regards and write whenever you have time.
Pramod
Why Project Fails
November 26, 2009
Projects and their Management
November 26, 2009
Heat Exchanger Lab Report
November 25, 2009
Lab report submitted by Brian Campbell Davis.
Bernoulli Lab Report
November 25, 2009
Lab report submitted by Brian Campbell Davis.
Energy conservation and demand side management
November 21, 2009
Lecture note prepared by Dr. Bhakta Bahadur Ale.
Energy Conservation
November 21, 2009
Lecture notes prepared by Dr. Bhakta Bahadur Ale
You vs Cubicle
November 18, 2009
Ah, the cubicle. The beige cage.
The cubicle is the antithesis of doing work you love. Virtually no one pictures a cubicle when they think about doing what they most love.
The cubicle is where you end up when you fall out of harmony with what you love.
The only way you can be stuck in a cubicle is by giving your power away to it.
A cubicle has no power over you. You can empower the cubicle, but it can’t empower itself.
To complain about a job you dislike is an act of giving your power away. You chose the job, and you can just as easily choose to stop showing up.
Think of it this way: If you and your cubicle got in a fight, who would win?
Still not sure? How about this: You plus a chainsaw vs. the cubicle plus a chainsaw. Who’d win?
If you decide to leave the cubicle, it is powerless to stop you. You could smash the thing to pieces just for spite.
So the only one keeping you trapped in that cubicle is you. You’re there by choice. You’re there because that’s the life you chose to create.
“But I need that cubicle because I need money,” you say.
Now you’re giving your power away to money. Money is nothing but a piece of paper… or a number on a computer screen. How can something so lifeless and inanimate have any power over you whatsoever?
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Demand Forecasting
November 14, 2009
Paper prepared byLecturer Mr. Ram C Poudel
