Professors are dignified pedantic personalities who devote their life completely in the academic field. To choose to be a professor is like choosing a formidable road of journey. They are the most intellectual people of the country yet are not into posh lifestyle. Their children won’t have a fate to attend elite schools. They don’t have enough time for their family and friends, for a vacation and a night out for a decent movie. Their bald heads, in many ways, showcase how much time they spend on ideating formulas and theories in a closed room amidst non-humanistic surround. Laboratories are their home and computer modulated systems are their second wives.

It is this beauty that keeps professors ennobled that above all worldly things they keep pursuit of knowledge at top. They spend majority of their lives not merely for themselves but for researches, innovation, discovery and solving puzzles for humanity and the world.

Come Nepal and things run in a reverse gears. Money and influence can buy you the sublime title of a professor. When you spend a long time teaching in a university, after getting minimum qualification required, one should be entitled to be professor only if they have done commendable research works, besides others. It is evident in many instances that they take credits of students research works − without seemingly zero inputs − to get the promotion. While professing in an university they spend more time and energy in private colleges, schools, law firms or hospitals that are exclusively running under their own proprietary. Many professors are good but many others have really polluted the teaching-learning ambiance of universities.

Finding a professor in his/her table is almost a nightmare when he happens to be an active member of some influential political parties. Once I approached a professor for a recommendation letter to apply for abroad studies. He behaved as if he is doing a really very big favor for me. It is true that you should maintain a good relationship and show respect to the seniors and teachers, let alone professors. I always respected him and was one of my role models.

That was why I decided to approach him for the recommendation. He made me and a few of my friends wait for hours in his paying clinic − he was a doctor – for three consecutive days only to refuse and suggest that we find other teachers for the letter.