You know one major reason why college is different from school? It’s because of the people who teach you whatever you’re supposed to learn. In school you’re faced with professional experienced hard core teachers who know what they’re doing (or at least put up a good show of it). In college, you come across this whole new exciting category of people, called ad hoc lecturers (or ad hocs, for the purpose of convenience). They generally tend to be graduates or post graduates fresh out of their education and onto teaching for a trial period, or for a bit of experience. And they are exciting, for several reasons.
First of all, and most obviously, the fact that ad hocs in general tend to be of the category that can send your hormones racing. It happens for both guys and gals. Nobody minds the dullest subject, if what you get in return is visual ambrosia. The entertaining part of the scene begins when the ad hoc in question gets an inkling of the existence of the ambrosia factor, and begins to ponder the real reason behind the strong attendance of so many devil-may-care, canteen-is-heaven young people! Especially when chronic back-benchers race for the first bench, and look like half-wits while the lecture is proceeding.
Next but equally, ad hocs are great favourites because of the bloopers and blunders they make while trying to educate their audience, who often have the upper hand, but prefer to enjoy the drama being played out. You get the one-liners… and then you get the masterpieces as well. It’s one thing when someone uses the definite article in English grammar (that means the word ‘the’) in a sentence, as though sprinkling cheese on pizza, (for example, ‘this is the not the correct way to do it, and it will the fetch you the bad marks in the exam’) but it totally beats all resistance to exasperation when the entire class is trying hard and unsuccessfully to explain the fact (to a totally unconvinced young teacher) that one mole of water does not quite contain two molecules of hydrogen and one molecule of oxygen! And then who is going to forget the lovely time they had, when every query with regard to Cochran boilers was met by an everlasting, never-changing negative!
Okay, I’m not implying that ad hocs are idiotic or useless. There have been several lovely moments in the lab, when you’re sitting down frustrated because the idiotic piece of machinery you’re supposed to be fooling around with is not working, yet you’re not worried, because you have three or four ad hocs conferencing over the situation, and arguing amongst themselves on what the problem is and how it is to be solved!
The most wickedly funny part is the fact that ad hocs cannot too easily be recognised as ad hocs. I and a couple of friends traveling home in the train once met this person and got talking to him. One strapping young friend of mine began to blast our college faculty, and the ad hocs in particular, and one specific ad hoc, only to be told by the other guy, quite obviously, that he himself was an ad hoc in the same department in our own college. There’s a colloquial saying to describe this kind of situation. “Waat lag gayi…”
Okay, but besides all the brickbats that they get, you can’t forget the bouquets that they deserve. Because who else is going to patiently reset the apparatus in a highly sensitive experiment every time you upset it, who else will show you how to do it right for the practical test, who else will tell you secret tips and tricks to make that stupid machine work, who else will bail you out with the exasperating ordeal you face in the viva later on, and who else will help you out with all the crazy and even insane doubts you face at the last minute before the final exams? Your friendly ad hoc teacher, of course!
