Dear class. I know it's not usual for you guys to expect or to be forced through a farewell speech of this kind. Nor is it typical of me to spend this much time in something that may appear pretty meaningless to most with a myopic vision. I have prepared it after a lot of deliberation. There are several reasons for this farewell talk. First and foremost is the fact that till now I have been acting as a mere mouth-piece for the existing technology and engineering tricks. I have been talking to you as Amit the lecturer; whereas in this speech you will find Amit the lecturer entangled and engulfed by Amit the person. This is my scope to present my perspectives which, even though not scholarly, is just as humane. The second reason for the speech is the fact that engineering alone is not enough in the current era. We are in difficult and, yet, interesting times. And times like now need more than mere dry technical know-hows.
Soon you guys will be 5/8th engineers. I will strongly urge you to seat back one day or night and relax and ponder upon the meaning and implications of this. Implications of becoming an engineer. As I have thrusted upon you again and again, we engineers are fighters, we are problem solvers and we are the makers of humanity's destiny. Someone aspiring to be all these three can definitely not come from a burgeon training. But, it is a pity that all you have been through till now is but a burgeon set up. However, a burgeon training does not and need not force you to be a mediocre burgeon elite! I have never been anything but a maverick myself. And I am sure I would have spilled off some of that over these months and affected some of you with that uneasy unsettling nausea which is the only way to creation and solution.
The next thing I will talk to you about is on the skills that I would have tried to train you with. But these are soft skills and can not be framed within the frameworks of the modern education. Yes, I am talking about the art of doing engineering. Given that you are maverick enough to drive head-on to a stubborn problem, how do you solve it? As I would have repeated more than once in the previous lectures, the simple modus operandi to solve any given problem, how-so-ever complicated and unthinkable, is to start from the beginning, step by step, without getting intimidated till you crack it open.
We are the wizards of the modern era. We have never been subdued by anything and if anything I will want you to go away with is this simple mantra. Nothing is impossible. And this is not a mere rhetoric dry hypothetical thing I am saying here; this is real; this is a proven thing. Nothing is impossible and no problem is unsolvable.
May you all continue to solve problems with an insatiable desire to never settle for a boring burgeon life.
