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Being A Teacher

I joined Smt. BNB Swaminarayan Pharmacy College at Vapi on 14th December, ‘2010. I am working here to date, with a gap of about eight months in 2012. Teaching is something which I never considered taking up as a career. Due to some reason I took up this job.

The time has passed within a fraction of seconds. The batch which was in the first year B. Pharm when I started teaching Anatomy and Physiology to them, is now in first year M. Pharm and I am teaching Clinical Research to them, some of them have taken up jobs in reputed pharmaceutical industries, and some of the girls have even got married. Ah! A long time it seems to be spent within no time. I have experienced a lot of things in these four years.




The year I joined, I taught Anatomy and Physiology to first-year students and Clinical Pharmacy to third-year students. I still remember that day when the results of my students were declared. It was a drizzly monsoon day, somewhere in July 2011; I was sitting on my desk and talking with one of my colleague with university website running on his laptop and a cup of warm tea on my desk. We were talking about getting admission for the PhD course while I was waiting for my tea to get cold. Suddenly he screamed with excitement “result of the third year B. Pharm is here”. Suddenly there was a silence on my talking lips with an increase in my heart rate. I was feeling as if I was getting the result for my examination. We started looking up the result on the website. I was feeling as if my heart was pumping more blood to the aorta than normal as he was scrolling the page down. Finally, it was done and the result was with us and the suspense was unfolded. Can you guess the result? With the result in front of me, I was feeling like I have reached the highest peak in the world. Yes! You are guessing it correct; it was 100% result in Clinical Pharmacy- the subject I taught them. That day I was feeling as if I have achieved something great. I was very cheerful, keeping aside all the other worries and tensions. Then after two weeks, it was again a day of suspense. The result of the first year was put up on the website. In the morning session, I was just done with my lecture and came to my desk where I got to know that the result of the first year was on the website. It was not a very good day for me. The ball was not in my court. Out of 62 students, 11 students got A.T.K.T. in Anatomy and Physiology- again the subject I taught them. I felt as if I failed to do my job and was feeling very upset until my HOD told me that this was the best result to date among all the colleges in Gujarat. But still, I was feeling a bit low. Lately, I realized that the academic result of students matters a lot to the teachers.

One another important thing, I realized, was that learning is a never-ending process. Even after taking a Post-graduation degree in Clinical Pharmacy, I still have so much to learn about this subject. And the most interesting thing is that teachers get to learn so much due to students. Who says that only the teachers can teach and students cannot? There is a wide variety of students in each batch with different thinking and reasoning abilities. All of them think from a distinct perspective, and they come up to us with their doubts and reasons. This thing makes the teacher think with all the different perspectives in which students are thinking. Students also make many mistakes, and from their mistakes, along with them, the teachers also learn a lot of things. When I was allotted to teach Pharmacology practicals for the first time, I realized that one of the steps in the procedure I was doing since my college days (when I was a student) was wrong. I was able to observe this mistake of mine just due to a doubt which was raised in one student’s mind. There are various such examples in which I have learned many new things and even realised my mistake due to my students.

Are students born good or bad? No, they are not. They are just like clay, which can be moulded into different shapes. And it is the moral responsibility of teachers to make them good individuals. Teaching life syllabus is more important than teaching the university syllabus. Every student has a different psychological state of mind, so they have to be handled in different ways.

I have had a lot of experiences in these four years, and have learned many things, which I don't think, can be learned with any other job other than being a teacher. Teaching is truly a profession where we grow to be happy with the student’s success and become sad with their bad times. Being a teacher one can experience success with every student. The utmost level of job satisfaction can only be felt being a teacher.

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