Feeling Nostalgic (Again)

You know what I hate most about blogging? It makes me think of things until I feel like I must type them out. And all of those things give me a lump in my throat all the time, and I remember about people and places that I've left behind. I end up listening to songs that mark a certain period in my life, and it forces me to reread old blog entries that make me want to cry all the time.

Now that I've typed those things out, I've finally realised why I didn't want to return here.

But then I am confident with myself--that I will never feel any regret of the past despite this lump in my throat that is still there the moment I'm typing this.

This afternoon my tutor in college told us a story about her experience of teaching in a school. She had a very disruptive student, and one day, tired of being patient with this student's behaviour, my tutor scolded him in front of others.

For a few days the kid (a teen) fell silent in class and soon afterwards he approached my tutor and asked her why was she so mad of him. She later found out that he had dyslexia.

I will end the story here, but before that I'd say that the ending went pretty well. 

I don't know why did the story touch me in a weird way. I ended up almost crying. And that sounds dramatic but that's the truth. 

My tutor then told us the right things to do if we end up as educators one day.

All of a sudden I have a mad level of respect towards those who contributed to part of the confidence that I possess now. It's not that before this I didn't feel this way at all, but all of a sudden, today, flashbacks keep on playing in my mind like crazy. It is as if there's this part of my brain that laid dormant all these while and now it's being activated again. To put it in more accurate words, I've been actually suppressing this every time it tried to emerge in the past few months.

Likewise, all of a sudden, I begin to see those who did it wrong. Those who broke a student's spirit. Those who planted seeds of discouragement. And all of a sudden I marvel at the complexity of the art of teaching and learning.

I marvel at the human emotions involved in it. I begin to see how great it is if every educator realised that he or she can change a student's life.

And in the end, I think of my days in Intec. I think of the days I was the opposite of disruptive--but it was as if I had dyslexia too. Suddenly all of these things become real stuff, you see. Suddenly it all made sense. It all made sense that I was actually trying very hard to seek help silently. It all made sense that no wonder after all that had happened, a friend told me she kind of knew I wouldn't make it. I was mad with this friend for a long time after that. But now, it all made sense. I now understand most of the things that had happened, and all of the mad emotions I had, and not to forget, that mad amount of respect towards a few people who just like this tutor I'm taking about, actually knew what were the right things to do.

I guess a little bit of nostalgia won't kill. If it's nostalgia that gives us the understanding of the past, then I guess there are a lot more things I need to look back on and write about, because sometimes the demons are not pleased when we leave them hovering. 

They need to be killed. They need to be killed with fingers dancing gracefully on alphabets to the music of nostalgia.