As time passed by, I realized that sitting at home made me progressively dumber, stupider (I know it's not a word!), it was driving me insane everyday. My mind had become so empty; I saw myself becoming the DEVIL!! Sitting at home reading, listening to music all day, watching all the films that I always wanted to watch, etc., it was all fun at first, but the realization that things in my life stayed where they were annoyed me immensely. Exciting things had ceased to happen in my life...the ennui seemed to have no end. That was when I decided, I had to set in motion all my blasted brain-cells and do something constructive with my time...I had to start working part-time somewhere, to keep myself occupied at any rate with something 'technical'...I was done with the non-technicalities of life! The artistic urges wanted to go to sleep while the practical, more scientific ones took over and took charge of my life! [spicing it up for me while they were at it! :)]
I started teaching. Something I always dreamed of doing!...but in my head, I always thought I would teach the grad-students (I've always considered them to be more committed to learning, and education, and have a wider knowledge base to work upon, etc.). NOW, here I was teaching first and second year under-grads! I mean, I was one of them so recently! I knew so well their never-ending need to be nasty to the new TA's! How I dreaded doing it!
Fortunately my first class with the first year B Sc kids was fabulous! *phew* I liked my students and they liked me! (atleast that is what I would sincerely like to believe). It was hard for me to accept how much I was enjoying teaching a bunch eighteen-nineteen year olds!...and thinking about it, for the first time, I realized what I was enjoying, I was loving the process of making better grad-students out of them! I was thrilled when they looked up to me for answers, I was elated when they asked me logical questions. It was fun leading them to answer their own questions, by deducing from the knowledge they already had, from their experiences and observations in day-to-day matters and then building upon it to finally teach them what I intended to do in the first place!
"The whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of young minds for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards."
--Anatole France (1844 - 1924), The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard
So far, according to me, it has been an enriching and educating experience for me (definitely) and my kids (hopefully). To sum it all up...
"When one teaches, two learn."
--Robert Half.
GOD knows how much I love teaching! God bless my kids!
P.S.: The, er, inspiration for typing this post was the Robert Half quote on my Gmail. "Fucking coincidence" was what 'S' called it when he randomly emailed me same the quote just as I began punching in my thoughts in this space, I loosely refer to as 'my blog'! :D
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