With the LAST WORKING DAY of the current Academic Year drawing to a close here at MCC, I look back, and ask myself, have I done my job to my utmost satisfaction? (forget the Head!)

Have I addressed all the anxieties of the student, dispelled his doubts, clarified his confusions etc etc etc. A lot of things I had in mind for my classes were unfulfilled.. for example, the formation of a Book Club, the Performance of a Play in Class by the Students, Special Lecture series by distinguished alumni and reputed Scholars, etc, remained only a fragmented reality.

I am to blame for the lacunae... Call it my lackadaisicality or lethargy... whatever... But I have one consolation, and that i find in the poetic diction of James Russell Lowell,

Life is a leaf of paper white

Whereon each one of us may write

His word or two, and then comes night.

'Lo, time and space enough,' we cry,

'To write an epic! ' so we try

Our nibs upon the edge, and die.

Muse not which way the pen to hold,

Luck hates the slow and loves the bold,

Soon come the darkness and the cold.

Greatly begin! though thou have time

But for a line, be that sublime,

Not failure, but low aim, is crime.

These lines do indeed invigorate me, and so I wish, in the words of Milton,

"To scorn delights, and live laborious days;"

for the sheer love of my profession.