A teacher is a compass that activates the magnets of curiosity, knowledge, and wisdom in the pupils. I completed my graduation from a private and famed university (Lovely Professional University) of my home state, Punjab. I didn’t get placed on campus when MNC’s were thronged my university as I was not much interested in any of IT companies. Being academically sound I was self motivated to become an engineer and a guide in order to cultivate engineering minds. I would have opted for the lecturer/professor in any university but I can’t abide by the rules of Education system in my country. On personal grounds I thought to provide good quality of service to young minds which is very laborious to find in today’s date as ‘teaching’ has been more materialized rather than good quality service and right guidance. As charity begins at home, I mentored by neighbor’s kids who were just matriculate. I can guarantee that you will hardly find techies from my home state as quality of education is not good. The students were really passionate about robotics and were keen to learn from me. I got my first ‘shishya’ then. It was challenging for both the parties to crack the competition and fetch a good rank. The theme was robotics. I thought of blending hydraulics and electronics into it but with school level kids we eventually decided to make it purely non-electronic, thought I was master in that field. We finally decided to make a robotic arm with ‘pick n place’ which was a unanimous decision. I taught them mechanics of arm and degrees of freedom .We utilized syringes with water as a hydraulic at every joint. The base was circular attached with caster wheels to provide movement. It was time to reap fruits of our hard work we had done. The students took part in the competition organized by the Amritsar college of Engineering, topmost among others in the city. Finally the time came, when I was elated and cheerful when they bagged Second Prize in the city. The innovation and creativity of young minds aided in achieving this status for myself.
I gained lots of confidence and was inspired from this to teach young buddies and planned to open an academy to provide robotics and embedded training. Journey wheel to make fortune started rolling in my home town.
Although not much successful into that, I got placed in one of the elite training institutes in India as a ESR trainer, Appin Knowledge Solutions, Appin technology lab, Amritsar. Then I gradually joined office at New Delhi, followed by Mumbai and finally last stint at Pune.
Recently joined EDUPRIME, Mumbai based firm into the field of Robotics Education and embedded Systems in India.
– Akshay Sharma