Saturday Special

It started as a bit of a banter with a small bunch of students who surprisingly showed up in the last period of the week on a hot sultry Saturday afternoon in August.
"What are you doing here?" I asked the stunned scholars who were as stupefied by the question as I was stumped by their presence. They were perhaps expecting to hear a word of praise. After all they had proved to be the disciplined ones who opted to attend the class at that stifling hour when everyone else had either gone home or decided to start their weekend early and had either hit the bar or gone for movies. My query was only half in jest; I was pretty serious.
Most students have the same perception about 'Soft Skills' classes in a Business School as the domain faculty - an unnecessary appendage. Soft skills faculty does precious little to allay the impression. Who wants to sit through another lecture on, ' how to make an effective presentation' or on, 'how to write a cover letter for your resume' anyway; that to at the fag end of a tiring six day week? My sympathies are actually with the students in this regard. I don't blame them too much if they want to travel to their home town to meet their parents or watch a good movie or even an ordinary one. 'Soft Skills' they reason is not even a credit course.

Not wanting to do anything from the syllabus in the absence of majority of the students, we decided that we will have a freewheeling discussion on whatever topic came up randomly. We actually had a very lively and enjoyable session. Surprisingly we had a bigger number of students who stayed back for the class the next week. Slowly our Saturday sessions became more and more rewarding and the class began to fill up till we had more students on Saturdays than on week days. We continued with discussing topics picked up randomly by students rather than anything from the syllabus. Everyone participated in the discussions and we had a lot of fun. I knew we had a good thing going when one day a student came to my cabin and said,
" Sir, I have to go home because it is my younger sister's birthday but I do not want to miss the Saturday Special."
The series of articles I am writing are a result of the wonderful time we had on these special Saturdays.