Lately, I got an opportunity to teach Bachelors level students in an academic institute. As this was my first teaching experience, I was very excited but nervous at the same time. I was supposed to take classes in the fourth and sixth semester. I was asked to take two classes back to back, one class each day a week (for the fourth semester) and the other class only for three days a week, Wednesday to Friday (for the sixth semester). The good thing about taking up teaching would be that I would be forced to get up in the mornings, as the classes would start early at 6:30 am. The sad part would be that I would miss the cozy sleep during morning time.

Finally, the day came when I went to the college for the first time to teach. On the first day, I was introduced to other teachers and members of the management team. Then I was given two files to take the attendance of the students. The files were made of Nepali paper with attendance sheet punched and placed inside. My name was written on the cover of each of the files along with some other details about the subjects that I taught. I just gave a quick glance to the information on the cover of the files, grabbed the files and moved to the class where I was guided by the coordinator. The coordinator introduced me to the students and handed the class to me. There were mischievous faces of students, all gazing at me, maybe because I was a new teacher there. I quickly tripped down my memory lane to a time where I used to be a student. I remembered how some naughty boys in class would already coin a nickname for the teacher on the very first meeting based on the teacher’s appearance and use it as a code word to talk among friends for the rest of their lives. I then wondered what would these kids call me while they talked about me among themselves.

The first class was just about the introduction. I introduced myself to the students and they introduced themselves to me. Then we talked about the course content. By the end of the first class, I was already feeling like I have been teaching for long. Then I took the second class, where the students were in the last semester i.e. 6th semester. As they were in the last semester, they were much laid back type. They had the attitude of college seniors. Most of them didn’t even appear on the first day. Nevertheless, the first experience was great.

From the next day onwards I started preparing slides, seeing lessons in YouTube and exploring the internet thoroughly to make sure that I would be giving the best examples to the students and the students would enjoy the class. So for the next 5 days, the only thing that was in my mind was ‘Teaching’. The students did seem to enjoy my class. I used to take frequent feedback from them and used to ask if I need to change my teaching methodology. The students in the fourth semester were quite active. However, I noticed that few students in the final semester were more into making noise. As a remedy to making noise, I used to ask questions to those who made noise in class.

One fine morning, I reached the college a bit early. The students hadn’t arrived. I grabbed the attendance files from the staff room. The files were kept in separate piles, for each stream. After taking the files, I went to the admin room, waited for a while, for the students to come. I started reading the information that had been written on the cover of one of the files given to me….

Bhubi Bista
BHM 6th Sem
Strategic Management
(WTF Period)

My eyes wide opened.

WTF?

There were some lines below, but I couldn’t go below. My eyes stuck on that word.
All of a sudden, my mind became clouded. I stressed hard to think who could have written that. Once again I hopped to my memory lane, back to a time when I used to attend similar classes and some students used to mock the teachers by doing various embarrassing activities. I became sure that it was one of my students who wrote that. But the students seemed to be enjoying my classes and neither of them seemed to be so troublesome. Again, the handwriting seemed similar throughout the cover of the file. The handwriting for the word ‘WTF’ was no different than the handwriting with which my name and subject were written. But it would be stupid to guess that someone from the management or admin team had written that word in my file. I saw the other attendance file given to me. There was nothing written there besides my name and class information. So, I became sure that one of my students should have written that, maybe because I was asking them too many questions for making noise. My mind started thinking 100 of things. I just couldn’t think anymore.

It was time for me to go to the class. I tried to take the first class normally. However, when I went to the second class, my eyes rolled around each student present in the class to guess who might have written that. I had my doubt on the last benchers because I used to ask them a lot of questions for making noise. But, had I ever left my file in the class? No, I was sure that I hadn’t. Maybe one of the students got hold of the file later and wrote that.

Even when I was giving the lecture, my mind was trying to sense a clue on who wrote the word.

I wasn’t delivering the same energy that day that I used to deliver in the previous classes. I tried not to give extra information, nothing besides the course content that day. I presumed they wouldn’t be liking it. So, I wrapped up my lecture early. I still had so many things in mind. The day had already turned as a bad day for me. Until the day before, I was so excited about teaching. Suddenly everything seemed gloomy. I felt really bad.

I went to the staff room again, to place the files from the place where I had collected the files. There were other attendance files there, for classes that would probably be on the second half or next day. I flipped through other files that were piled up, to see if the students disliked other classes like mine and to see if they had written something on the other files.

I flipped one file just to find that there was information only about the teacher and the class timing. Then I flipped the second file. The file had the teacher’s and subject’s name and then something was written in a similar handwriting as in my file with the characters ‘(ST period)’. I wondered what ST meant. It probably meant something stupid. I flipped through the other files. I realized that in some files, only the required information was there. However, in some files, there was another line with words like ‘TF period’, ‘STF period’ and so on. But none of the files had WTF. I became more curious. Who was writing this? Again, the handwriting exactly matched with that who had written other information in those files. Unable to handle my curiosity, I took a file with a word written “SWT Period” to the admin room and asked the administrator if he knew what the words meant. The administrator replied casually – “The classes will be on Sundays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, so it is the short form for Sunday, Wednesday and Thursday”.

Jesus! I was expecting something very nasty.

My eyes rolled down to my own file after hearing that. The meaning was clear. So his statement suggested that WTF period meant classes on Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays!!

I went to the admin room back with the files. I sat there alone for some time and remembered a story that I had read during my school days whose title was “Doshi Chasma”. I felt like the main character of that story, where the protagonist would think and overthink about an event that didn’t actually happen. I was making a fuss about nothing.

Though I felt extremely dumb, I got an important lesson from this experience. Your thoughts on what others think might not always hold true. If I hadn’t known the truth that day, maybe my teaching experience would have turned negative for me even when nothing had actually happened in reality. I had already declined my performance for the day because of my negative thoughts. Even if I hadn’t known the truth that day, I should have been able to accept things normally and I should have continued my classes with the same enthusiasm that I had before the incident took place. I realized that most of the stress in life comes from the way we respond, not the way life is. All we need to do is adjust our attitude towards the problem and all that extra problem and stress is gone. Once we replace negative thoughts with positive, we will start getting positive results like I did in my classes later.

Ever since the event took place, the meaning for the acronym WTF has changed for me. There are no negative words, just negative thoughts! I have started keeping my face to the Sunshine so that I don’t see a Shadow.