BECAUSE OF ARISTOTLE

Why don’t teachers like the ‘i-am-know-it-all’ students? I don’t get it. When I was a teacher, I cherished those student who knew things and I remember I was always thrilled to know what they knew and discuss further so the other students at the table or in the room could benefit from the knowledge.

At the age of 43, I became a college student again. It was Indus Valley School Of Arts in Karachi. I will be very frank here, I was not ‘liked’ much. I am not going to deny that I happened to be a ‘I-am-know-it-all’  student. Sad…but it’s not my fault. I am 43 and of course it comes with great possibility that a woman like me who reads, reads and reads would end up having things known to her. (And then, of course would love to share)

The problem was not that I knew things already, the problem was that the teachers were 10 years younger than me (hence the gap in knowledge) and I didn’t realize that I was supposed to act dumb to be liked. Two of them, Zeesha Haider and Hisham Masood, put a lot of effort to break me. When I refuse to be broken, I came to know that I was in a battle with them.

The only fault was that I corrected Zeeshan on telling that Aristotle existed 5000 years ago (eh?) He repeatedly told us (and Hisham repeated him) that he is a ‘philosophy reader’ (funny to know then that Aristotle lived 5000 years ago J ) I just simply said, “No he was there about 2300 years ago.” And that I read too. Then he said, one day, that Bar Mitzvah was a Jewish child’s birthday. I ONLY said it was not and told the fact. He quickly retorted “we can verify on Google.” (lol…how about verify before saying things in the class) . As retaliation he trashed my screenwriting and reward with highest praise the one student who wrote a child’s story. (I was pretty bumped because I worked hard for screenwriting as I love writing.)

Last thing was the nail in the coffin (which made me decide on leaving the college). Zeeshan apparently has habit of straying from topic. He started bashing spirituality and other religions. I was offended. I asked which class was that and he retorted it would have been ‘difficult’ for some people to listen to this. (His bullshit). Crazy isn’t it that he saw me meditating a day ago and next day he spewed crap about meditation by saying that people should instead consider ‘moving and dong something’. (It was funny as I moved way more than him.) Even after all this, he threatens me by saying he would not be dictated and if I tried then I should watch out (when did I dictate?) Then I tried to patch things up after class and he threatens me to watch out or else… (Or else???) What would he do? Fail me? Hah…I was too good to be there in the first place; next thing I would want to fail.

After all this, me, complaining to the registrar Umair, was called for a patch up meeting. Astonishingly, Zeeshan and Hisham lied and denied everything. Hisham was no different than Zeeshan. It was very funny to hear Hisham introducing Zeeshan to Umair as ‘a man with philosophical background’  J . (People who read philosophy, don’t behave like this. They are open minded.) They both backed each other and accounted me a liar and a student with ‘attitude’.

I left the very same day. No use wasting a year in a useless battle.