The Professor’s ‘Problem!’ 😊

#newspaperinlanguagelearning

15 October 2023

Well, Feature articles and Opinion articles written by College / University Professors are a class apart! 😊

They have an attested aura of authenticity and excellence writ large on their lines.

That’s because the Professor’s Pen always raises a ‘Problem’ of some sort or the other!

To reword it, there’s always a ‘Problem’ in the Professor’s Pensive Pen! 😊

Gives us all—researchers and academics—a clue and a cue, to writing an impactful academic / research article, ain’t it?

Yes! Writing an academic article always requires a ‘Problem’!

Only when there’s a ‘Problem’, there can be a ‘Possible’ ‘Solution’ to the Problem, ain’t it?

This blog post seeks to highlight the various ways in which the Professors here, have effectively foregrounded their ‘Problems’ before giving possible solutions to their ‘Problems’ thus raised! 

Former VC, Delhi University, & Adjunct Professor of Mathematics, University of Houston, US - Prof. Dinesh Singh, has written a short and impactful article on the need to ‘Expose Students to the Power of Data in Daily Life’, in today’s Sunday Supplement to TNIE!

Prof. Dinesh Singh foregrounds the ‘Problem’ in his opening sentence itself.

Says he -  

One of the most tragic ironies of the programmes that run across our land relates to data in the curriculum. As far as I can tell, there has been an almost abysmal neglect of the use, appreciation and importance of data in our everyday lives in undergraduate programmes.

I have often expressed strong opinions on the harm that results in myriad of ways to not just students, but also society and the nation.

Let me begin by illustrating the importance of data in language and literature.

Back in 1843, American author Edgar Allan Poe published a short story titled, “The Gold-Bug”.

The tale won a competition and was hugely popular in its time.

The crux of the story relied on what seems to be the first use of data in English literature. More importantly, it engendered a bit of a culture of creating and deciphering secret codes. “

For whatever reason, Poe was aware that the letter ‘e’ occurs with the greatest frequency in the words of the English language.

In the story, Poe makes the protagonist use this knowledge to crack a secret code that leads him to a hidden treasure.

Many years later, Arthur Conan Doyle uses the exact same idea in the short story The Adventure of the Dancing Men featuring Sherlock Holmes.

These two stories illustrate the use of frequency analysis to crack secret codes. Deciphering codes is of extraordinary importance for governments and the corporate sector, and frequency analysis as well as a felicity with languages plays an important role…

says Prof. Dinesh Singh.

Yet another lovely article by Utkarsh Amitabh, [Chevening Fellow with the University of Oxford], titled, ‘Do Good, to be and feel Good’, also foregrounds a ‘Problem’!

Says he -

Some suggest that the source of our troubles is that we reflect too much. Others claim that we reflect too little. In both cases, the focus of our reflection is our own self.

I suspect that is a problem.

To understand the conundrum of happiness and well-being, I reached out to my professor of moral philosophy at Oxford, Dr Jeff McMahan.

He shared that being a morally good, and somewhat self-sacrificing, person is one of the best ways to have a life that is not only objectively good, but also subjectively satisfying.

Being less self-absorbed and devoting time to projects that don’t necessarily serve our own interests leads to personal fulfilment of a higher order. He suggests a helpful practice:

Think about the people you genuinely look up to and model your behaviour based on the attributes that make them admirable.

The people McMahan admires are mostly philosophers from the past such as John Stuart Mill, Henry Sidgwick, Samuel Johnson, Aldous Huxley and George Orwell.

In addition to being reflective in a way Socrates would have approved, they got closer to the truth than most others and lived their lives according to their core values, even if it involved significant sacrifice.

This is something that the modern happiness industry often misses. It is so focused on helping us become the best versions of ourselves that it leads us into an unhealthy self-obsession.

If we truly want to enhance our well-being, we need to look beyond ourselves. We need to make service our core value.

Of course, we need to take care of ourselves and ensure our needs are met, but that’s a start. Self-fulfilment is a start, not the goal of our reflections, actions and dreams,

says Amitabh!

And so, to conclude,

When a ‘Problem’ is effectively foregrounded, and put forth in a very clear, concise and precise language, the writer can then proceed boldly to try and solve the ‘Problem’ in their own ways, using examples, illustrations, evidence, allusions, statistics and case studies, and present them to the lay reader in a convincing way!

That highlights the importance and the necessity of a ‘Problem’ to an Academic Paper, ain’t it?

So the next time, when your classmate sits down to write their academic/research paper, ask them,

What’s your ‘Problem’? 😊

That solves it! 😊