365 Days- Book I

31. The Professor

July 31, 2018

"Write about a teacher that has influenced you."

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I am not joking, the picture above, in the banner; that is me as a student, like an owl in daytime, just wanting to snooze (I found school boring, boring and boring) or like the penguin, completely out of place. I rarely missed a school day, but I did not enjoy it, much. So when I am asked to write about which teacher had a great influence on me, it would be 'all or none' for I do not recall any particular teacher who is worthy of being remembered and revered.

But there were teachers whose classes I enjoyed and a couple of teachers whom we enjoyed making fun of, I know, not very nice of us, but then those teachers simply seemed to be begging for it. The first would be the Chemistry teacher in our Plus Two classes; he was a riot, the class clown. It is with great clarity I remember two incidents, in which he effortlessly made a fool of himself.

The first one was to write out the chemical formula of an aldehyde (it has a functional C=O, and if the remaining two bonds of the carbon could either have hydrogen, alkyl or aryl substitutes, e.g. the trick to writing it out is to place as many 'C' that are in the formula and then go around assigning the bonds and the Oxygen / Hydrogen molecules. When the whole class, in a rare show of unity, failed to do so, the teacher deigned to write it for us. Unfortunately, his smug expression turned grim and then to embarrassment when he could not proceed after 16 Cs. The rest of the class period was spent in furious laughter and punishing silence.

The second was a similar incident where his perpetual smugness gave another opportunity for amusement for us, this was in the lab where we had to perform a test for carbon dioxide, it involves turning lime water milky. All of us failed and a student's suggestion that the substance (it must have been a metal carbonate), that the substance might be impure was met with a sneer and a general lecture as to our incompetency. An attempt from his side met with the same failure though we had learnt our lesson, our mirth was saved for after school hours.

We also had cute teachers (our substitute Mathematics teacher was a senior from a very school, and we girls used to tease him, behind his back and out of earshot, as 'Goergie Porgie,pudding and pie' because he was named George). Then there was our Geography teacher, who could draw a perfect circle, freehand, on the blackboard, with his left hand. That was the best about him(he had an accident in which he lost his right hand, chopped clean at the wrist, so he had to teach himself to write with his left hand again). And yes, he is responsible for me remembering the cumulus clouds.

Colleges had its share of such smug, dismissive teachers, but I could not be bothered much, for in college, I would spend most of my time reading novels, sitting in the backbench. We had an English professor who was wild at our different grasp of the language and a Commerce professor whose idea of teaching was to read from the text book.

You might be wondering why I remember them, those smug, irritating teachers, the most; it is because, inadvertently they taught me the most important thing in life; education is gaining knowledge not receiving a degree, that teaching means to share what you know, to enhance a student's understanding, not making fun of their ignorance. For when you do, you are not a teacher, you are a caricature of that profession.

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Word count. 618

And I complete one month of this challenge - only one day when I posted a minute late.