Professional Student

There is an outside and old person who always attends our department's weekly graduate seminar. He appears to be an old professor from other engineering departments. He always asks good questions in the seminars, especially in the areas of my specialties which surprised me to some degree. One time, one of my Ph.D. students wanted to form his dissertation committee. He asked me who he should put on the committee. I said how about the professor who attends out seminar regularly. My student told me that he is only a graduate student in the civil engineering department. His laboratory is right beside mine. He learned a lot from my student.

 

Today, I saw him talking to our department secretary. After that, I told the secretary that "I thought him to be a professor but he is a student." Apparently, the secretary knows him very well. She said he has been around for a long long time. He just gave the secretary a business card with a title of "professional student".

 

A professional student! A person who is willing to make low student salary for many many years with the only aim of just learning the knowledge but with no intention of using the learned knowledge in reality. Definitely, such professional students should have a good and peaceful mind for most of us to have so that we will not complain about the injustice and inequality in the society. Having such mind, we can enjoy the life more and may live longer, too. But do you want to be one?