Today I listened as one of the lecturers I’m assisting admit that she made a mistake with regards to advising a group of students, and how it was a learning point for her. It was an experience that meant a lot to me, for a variety of reasons. For one, it serves as confirmation to me about this lecturer’s character… that while she may at times resemble a former ex-boss of mine, she has a fundamentally different personality – a softer, gentler one that gives me assurance that my traumatic experiences won’t be repeated in this new job. It’s often difficult for me to overcome the fear and bad associations built up in my mind regarding certain work patterns and mannerisms exhibited by people who are in charge over me, but every time I watch the people in my faculty behave and react to difficult situations or mistakes, I realise once again that I am very fortunate to be in this place. Maybe some day, I’ll be able to regain my faith in the innate benevolence and forgiving nature of humanity, and not constantly cringe or brace for a storm when I make a mistake too.
Secondly, it has also helped me realise that I don’t need to be a perfect teacher. Maybe this is also because of my past – or maybe my past experiences have merely excerbated the natural tendency of my personality to blame myself for everything that goes wrong. If I have failed in my little duties, if I receive any sort of complaint, if I make a mistake or an error, I can magnify it all out of proportion and get really down on myself. Even if I have 99 A-grade students, and 1 student who got only a B+ because of some error in the way I taught or advised him, I will worry and agonise over that one “failure”. What did I do wrong? Should I have done something else? What sort of punishment or bad consequences should I expect for this mistake? Will this person hate me for life? I have let them down… I am no longer worthy of trust, I have failed in my responsibilities. All these kinds of thoughts run through my mind.. and even though I’m wise enough to dismiss the majority of them, still… they occur at least once, and even more if someone else expresses them to me. That’s why I always have a strong desire to act and play perfectly. Even in my games, I can re-play the same scenario over and over again past the point of boredom, just to achieve perfection. I once spent 6 hours replaying 10 minutes of game time, over and over again, to find the optimal series of actions to take.
But I’m learning to let go now, following the examples set before me. While yes, students are important, and to some extent I should feel responsible for them, I needn’t beat myself too harshly if I feel like I’ve failed them. It’s a learning point for me, and I should regard myself as an apprentice at the craft of teaching, not as a master. I can make mistakes. I’m expected to make mistakes every now and then. I’m not perfect. I can learn and improve, and maybe not make the same mistakes again. There is forgiveness. There is hope. There is always a new batch of students every semester. I can hone my craft slowly, iteratively, working until I’ve polished my skills and gained more experience.
There’s so much to learn about the craft of teaching, I realised. It really is a skill by itself. And teaching design is almost as fun as doing design. When doing design, you’re trying to make certain explicit principles become embedded and tacit in the designed product. When teaching design, you’re trying to make things that are embedded and tacit in the designed product become explicit and extract design principles which you can share to the students. It’s the same process, just in reverse. That’s what I find so fascinating about it.
