Fulfillment at it's 'less finesse'

After a week - and still counting - of being involved in a Journalism seminar held, of all places, in our school, I find myself reckoning I have done 20+ yawns already. And I discovered my newest talent: sleeping anywhere as long as there's a chance. I suppose I learned several things. And things happen for a cause.

Clichéd or not, being a teacher is not an easy task.

What will you do when you are required to work on something you are awfully, well, let's say it's something you get turned off? I honestly don't depict myself as a person giving questionnaires and holding a chalk. Or even hesitatingly critiquing someone's work as if you had the weight of her life and future in your hands, by the way you use your words. Or in a sense of candor, being a teacher. And it had all come to a pure question of why did I get excited of all these things.

Our campus paper adviser told us to get ourselves ready (preparing a well-organized matrix, studying harder, preparing activity sheets and quizzes) for something I am unclear of. Until she clarified we will be teaching other students about their categories in a seminar. Mine's Features - Filipino. I was definitely startled for a minute, that's a fact, and the other time I used to complete the requisites. Even if hard, it was no match for something I was more delighted. It gives a greater impact. I was that excited for the seminar.

I grabbed every moment that would make it seem like time was in a fast forward motion, or that the world rotates faster. Then it works, only to realize that 5 more days is like 5 decades. I am ready, and does our clock need batteries already? It ticks slowly.

Finally. The wait is worth it. My, what do you call it, weird form of suicide is over. And after sitting next to my co-lecturers, I gazed at my 'students' and I assumed they have the same feeling as I have.

Only, I had high hopes.

I don't know, but while discussing the basics, I really thought they were attentive. I thought I was doing a very good job. Not until we had our activities, and they act clueless about all the things a minute before we just talked about. Maybe it was just me... yes, maybe... because after asking my co-lecturers, they were doing a fine job. Maybe it was my way of teaching or something. Maybe I have come to a point where I will sob again because I my students get low learnings. Subtle, perhaps, because I am acting excellently about how it was, at first, perfectly fine with me, how they don't do their work wisely. At first, though.

I don't exactly know, why in the first place I had high expectations. If they really don't have talent, I will understand. Point is, they really have. And it has slowly come upon me that why they have been acting like a sloth, is that they don't really have the eagerness to learn a thing. And as a teacher, I can only feel great dismay. Seriously.

Maybe everything falls into each other's right place. Realizations come; and when they do, it's aching tons. Perhaps, fate has done this. Somehow, it was only done because He wants me to grasp how teachers are very much important. In my perspective, because I have experienced being in their place, now I know how they very much pour everything they have and own, to decipher it to their students. How they taught everything like it's no sweat, and they become as patient as a deep river.

Teachers didn't only teach us different colors; they give us a chance to use them to make our life more colorful. As I suspected, they never gave importance to a black crayon, because they don't want us to learn how to use it for our lives. Teachers, in my most modest approximation, are just a bunch of bookworms standing while we, the students, sit and get bored. And my so-called 'most modest approximation' wasn't being so superlative at all.

If this seminar was a contest, although I have no other opponents but my ego, the first prize would be their future outputs. I am not underestimating them, oh please. It's just that, a teacher like me would want them to improve, and from the start that's what I've been telling all along.

Bottom line is, I will only get fulfillment if they, too, would be satisfied. I told them, 'If you don't satisfy yourselves, then neither will I be.' I guess that's a challenge for them, and a challenge for me to encourage them.

A teacher (wait, I'm being melodramatic and redundant) is simply a second parent. And this seminar, I conclude, is part of my experiences I will reminisce. Although unexceptionable to my long list of failures, somehow this served as my trophy. Trophy I cannot explain what.

Trophy... trophy that I already thought and signified the meaning of a teacher.

Back to reality... and I'm gravely craving for sleep. I just have to say my farewell... zZzZ