The Best Teacher Ever
The Best Teacher Ever
I’d like to share a story about a teacher of mathematical analysis and some other subjects at my university.
He was a grumpy, rude man and always an angry person. He told students things like: “Are you idiots?!” Or: “Why you are so stupid, maybe something heavy fell on your head?” And many, many other acerbic things that are impossible to translate into English. Before examinations, we would always shake with fear. 9 out of 10 students failed his exams and then they would have to retake it many times. In our first year, our class consisted of 23 people, but only 12 students graduated, because the others were expelled due to underachieving in his subjects. We all passionately hated him.
But at the same time this teacher was an excellent professional, good scientist, a great teacher and a smart and wise person. He had his own way of teaching. If someone couldn’t understand a case and asked him to explain it again, he usually stared at the student and waspishly asked another question so that student would realize that actually their question was silly and that they understood the case.
Only in the last year of university did almost every of students realized that he was their favorite teacher.
It's been 5 years since I graduated from university, but even now I can remember the whole course of mathematical analysis. At any time of day or night I can write any formula, mathematical convention or theorem. What I want to say is that not all disagreeable people we have to communicate with have a devastating impact on us. More often, communication with difficult people helps us to learn many things in life.
Besides higher mathematics he also taught us to be more diligent, persistent, to be steady under pressure and be calm and impassive in any situation.
Specifics
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tell: changed to "share a story" because "tell" works better in conversation, when you would actually be speaking. I added "a story" mostly because it seemed appropriate in the context of the whole entry.
"He told to students such things like" vs "he told students things like" You don't need the "to" because it is already established that your teacher is addressing the students. Also I removed the "such" so that the sentence would read more smoothly. You could keep it in by writing "He told students nasty/ horrible/mean things, such as" which uses "such as" in a similar way as "for example".
"Every time before examinations we were shake with fear." I removed "every time" and instead added the "always" in later on, thus retaining the meaning of the sentence. Then I changed "we were" to "we would" because "were" was the wrong past tense. Present tense of "were" would be "are". For "would" it is "will". Consider "we are shake with fear" and "we will shake with fear". However, if you did want to use "were", the sentence would have to change to "We were shaking with fear." In the whole sentence, " Before the examinations, we were shaking with fear." However, the alternative using "were" doesn't really work in the context of the whole story.
"Because others of us were expelled" I removed "of us" because "us" refers to a group of people that includes yourself! From what I can tell, you were not expelled. :)
"We" to "He" because "we" is for a group of people that includes yourself.
Alright! Hope all that was helpful in some way!
