Remember those last few minutes when you are inside the exam hall and all the answers flood into your brain and you try so hard to get them on your exam papers. You are at the moment, stressing your palm to slide fast through the papers and focusing all your energy on your fingers to make your pen scribble as much as it can (or a bit more than it actually can); then there comes your teacher standing next to you, asking you to hand out the papers RIGHT THEN but you just won’t. You lose all your senses especially hearing ,then your teacher snatches your paper. You curse silently and rest your pen , then you turn your head around to examine your friends. You then shout “Miss! The people at last benches are still writing their answers.This is so not fair. Why do you always collect papers from the first benches.”

I always used to feel my teacher was being unfair to me then; now that I am the person collecting and snatching those exam sheets, I feel the pressure my teacher must have then. I get the same complaints in every tests I take. I feel like shouting at the class and say-“I don’t have 40 hands to collect the papers at same time.”
This is one of those countless moments that make me think of my teachers now that I am standing in their shoe (not literally though). Ah! and my favorite is that flower giving part.I remember going to school with freshly picked bunch of flowers and giving it to my favorite teachers( trying to make a beautiful bunch with all that flowers and leaves). Now, little kids come up to you and gift you those little bunches of flower .I feel so nervous and awhed at the same time; mostly I wonder how my teachers must have felt when little me handed them flowers.

Whenever miss wore a new kurta or changed the side of partition of her hair or even when she shortens her hair by uno centimeter , we would notice that and then exchange glances with our friends sitting across the room and then later talk about it. I should have known this was coming back to me; students specially girls would just notice each and every details. I make a hair bun after I get my hair short so that the students won’t notice but then my hair do would fail to conceal that. They would just know! They will not only merely observe you but also come and talk to you about how great you look with your gajal and pearl earrings. One of my friend shared how the students were even copying the looks.

I so remember me starring at the face of my teacher as if I was attentive and thought I was being cunning but now you can tell by the look of their face that the curtains in their ears have fallen down and their eyes are automated to look and not see. Thinking about this now makes me feel stupid for being so confident then on believing to have fooled my teachers.

When I was a student I would get into panic mode as soon as friends started counting days in their hand for exams to come. Then I would think “aba sir/miss lai ananda hune din aye…padhauna ni pardaina, revision matra huncha ani exam ko din ma ta class ni hudaina.” Little did I realize how much pressure the teacher has to be in during exams, worrying about student’s performance. Then comes the paper checking part; I feel so sorry for my teachers for complaining they didn’t get our papers checked sooner than they did. When my teacher would get the total makings on paper wrong even by few marks while they grade our papers i used to think how dumb and careless he is to get simple addition wrong but now I know; checking the papers and then adding those numbers you tend to make few mistakes and miss out marks hiding on corners of the paper.After all teachers are not a calculator,even calculators make errors.

Every other person tells me how it is necessary for you to be a teacher once in your life. Now, I have been realizing why they said so. Being a teacher , I am not just living the life my teacher lived but also I am learning what she must have learned then. Most important things that I have learned is to be observant , be in other person’s shoe and think.

One thing that tops everything about living a teacher’s life is that feeling of pride when your students excell or even when they show that they are trying. They would just draw a cow that looks more like a dog or a giant flower growing near the house with huge pumkins on the roof but to see that intense dedicated look on their faces as if they were creating a masterpiece just soothes your heart and bring that faint smile back to your tired face.Then a thought comes to my mind “Did my teacher also feel this way?”

“How about tracing the leaves instead of drawing?” “Yesssss”

She said” i don’t know how to draw at all.” I asked her to just draw what she could make and then color. She was proud of how the picture turned out to be with those bright happy colors.