He looked the worried faces before him, then asked: “How many completed all five questions?”
Not a hand was raised.
“How many answered four?”
Still no hands.
“Three? Two?”
The students moved restlessly in their seats.
“One, then? Certainly somebody finished one.”
But the class kept silent. The professor put down the papers. “That is exactly what I expected,” he said.
“I just want to impress upon you that, even though you have completed four years of engineering, there are still many things about the subject you don’t know. These questions you could not answer are very common in everyday practice.” Then, smiling, he added: “You will all pass this course, but remember — even though you are now college graduates, your education has just begun.”
The years have made the name of this professor unclear, but not the lesson he taught.