Never Meant to be Practical!

Mithun's latest post gave my memory a kick and Voila! I have a post ready.

When I say "practical", I mean my school and college practicals, that I have consistently screwed up, mostly to my benefit.

Archimedes Principal : Class V, Practical exam (finals). *Please go to the site, not to read but to see Archimedes where he'd had this lightbulb-in-the-brain moment. He gives complex to SRK.*

I measured the volume of the cube and then suspended it into the water. Naturally, the water was displaced and I collected it into the beaker. Since "the volume of the immersed object will be exactly equal to the volume of the displaced fluid", it should have been equal. But this was MY experiment and the water displaced was more than the cube's volume. APPLAUSE!

For the fear of flunking my practs, I was pouring the water back into the vessel when the teacher came and stood near me to test my exp. To cut the long story short, she measured the cube *my calculations were correct* and she measured the water in the beaker *after I had managed to pour back a little bit of it in order to redo*, that surprisingly, equalled the volume as the cube. She said "good, very good" and till date I'm speechless.

Reflection of light experiment : Class VII

It was definitely a task to look into the mirror to and place pins in such a way that when you look at it from an angle, it looks like one single straight line.

I was *and am continually so* terribly lazy that I marked both the sides by taking proper angles on the protractor and drew a faint line. Later pinned the pins onto the line, not without forgetting to rub my drawn line and not without making stray pin marks here and there to make believe the teacher my efforts. *Mukta, go do chugli =))*

I thought 10th class was the end of all practicals. I thought wrong. They followed me till the end of my college.

Business Communication Viva : S.Y.B.com, Finals

My dad had gifted me my first ever cell in S.Y B.Com and I was proud to show it off. Mine was the only colour phone among friends. My pride didn't stop me from taking cell with me during the viva.

It was finally my turn for the oral and my cell sang just when I was about to sit! And I faced the music from the prof. "Don't you know you are not allowed to take cell phones with you during practical exams??" That shook my every bit of confidence that I'd had in me for the orals. Though it was soon restored. Prof asked me " what are the modern forms of communications? Give me examples"

Costing, Taxation & Law Practice : S.Y.B.Com, Finals

Bhonde Sir, the one who was considered the terror of B.M.C.C. and whose name alone made one tour the universe in 5 seconds flat, was my professor and also my viva internal prof. The first question he asked me was "Why did you take CTLP for specialization? Why not Busi. Admin.?
Me : *already so nervous that my body was even scared to tremble* Huh??!
Sir : What huh? Why did you take CTLP?
Me : uhhh... *not sure if he wanted an honest one, or the one that would please him* Sir, frankly because I did not want to do an entire theory subject...
(I blurted my honesty out and was quick to pray that I would not have offended him by not buttering him like others did)
Bhonde sir : *smiled and turned towards external prof* She's one of my regular students and very sincere.
.... and he let me off, not a single question about CTLP and I got 19/20 for that viva.

and there are 2-3 more where I misunderstood the profs' questions and provided goofy answers much to the examiners' surprise and amusement. But I stop here, fingers aching.