Being a teacher for 17 years, I have encountered countless of students sitting in my classroom. Year after year, faces come and faces go, some of which the names I can’t barely recall when they leave the university during graduation. But I don’t forget the faces who, for each semesters stared at me, some inquisitively while others blankly. As a computer engineering teacher, it is not just the knowledge of the course that I want to impart to them but in my heart, it has always been my great desire to give to each one of them the wisdom about life that will help them for the challenges that may come along the way as they step the corporate ladder once they will leave the university. And so, I made the platform my pulpit, teaching them about life – assisting and listening to their complains and sharing with their joys like an ordinary person in the campus.
It is my great consolation, when wherever they see me, they always go out of their way to say “how are you?” and in some occasions many years after they graduated, they still visit me in school. I sometimes encourage them to give advices to the students in my class. There, they would share to them the hardships they’ve experienced under my class. And it gives me immense joy when I hear how, that instead of being bitter, they are very thankful for the knowledge and the Christian guidance that I used to teach them. Others would e-mail me from other parts of the world, happily informing me what’s going on with their career and their lives. Even though my former students are now highly successful and highly paid in their respective careers, but for me, I will always be a teacher at heart, to continue molding the youth. It is my consolation and my joy to be a part of their growing up years, to be part of their life as students.
Just now I found a Retweet in my mailbox: