teacher perfect

Classes for my Master's program started yesterday. Being the nerd i am i love the first day of school. There is a subtle thrill in meeting new people who are on the first day strangers, but whose faces become the familiar setting of the classroom. Looking at the instructor and listening to her i was trying to figure her out; trying to imagine what kind of semester it'll be in her class.

And i say her class because during the two and a half hours of each week we're gathered in there, we really are hers. The instructor embraces the session, and what it will become is purely based on how the instructor shapes it.

Staring at her i realized i was really listening to every single word she was saying and taking it all in. This isn't because i am a good student, it's because she was a good instructor.

I didn't care that she was standing up there in ugly shoes, a skirt that was two sizes too big and raised to her throat, and ugly colored blazer and matching turban, or that she had a memory stick and an ID card hanging from her neck. She was ugly but what she did was beautiful. She addressed each and every one of us looking us and the eye and remembering the least significant things we said. She had our attention she made me want to make her talk more.

And right then and there i realized this was the kind of teacher i wanted to be. I don't want to be the head of blah blah and blah. i want to influence people. i want them to listen to what i say and use it and benefit from it. I want to shape young minds; to have them base their actions on something i said in class so many years ago. I want to teach generations; to teach the son or niece of someone i taught before them. If i ever become the university instructor i hope to be, i want students to register for my classes because they know they will learn a thing or too. I promise i will apply everything life taught and continues to teach me.