He Really Stood Out to Me

With the years I have grown in really respecting the teacher job. From my point of view, it seems very tedious to teach people who concentrate for a span of 2 minutes and spent the rest of the time thinking what to eat for lunch. I’m sure Just like any job there are the good and the bad sides. I can only briefly imagine what it feels like as my limiting experience with dealing with people at work. Coming to the point of my case is that in Japan I had two literary classes taught by the same teacher and he really stood out to me. He was an American and the classes were fully in English, he was a professor at the school but the classes that he taught consisted always of a small group of people (its just the way the school worked). I can confidently say that these were one of the best classes I had decided to sign up for – not only because I get to just read books for class but because he was teaching.   Like any teacher he had to deal with bored students staring into one dot on their laptop or googling intrusive thought like ‘will I die if I have a headache’.  Can’t say I was always focused but I could see that he really had a passion about what he talked in class. Spending an hour and a half just talking about a certain work is a no brainer for a guy like that. That was not his only charm every so often he would put on his slide’s random titbits about himself. The (semi) nosy person that I am I enjoyed learning my teacher’s lore and he had great things to say – volunteering in South America, being in a band, his relationship with his daughters etc. Being in two of his classes we interacted more and if I mention some specific author made an impression on me, he will send me more of his works. He really wasn’t shy in being open about himself in the classroom, it didn’t really feel like I just had a lecture on why is Albert Camus always questioning existence or what is Little Prince actually about? (which are interesting topics on its own nonetheless). A huge unpredicted Japan exchange moment was having to interact with the sweetest literary teacher, and I will always remember this period of my life.