When I teach students, I fell that I like prostitutes—it’s just because we get paid for doing what we enjoy. I like teaching. I don’t believe I can really do without teaching. The reason is, I have to have something so that when I don’t have any ideas and I’m not getting anywhere I can say to myself, “At least I’m living; at least I’m doing something; I’m making some contribution”—it’s just psychological.
When I was at Pondok Pesantren Ath-Thullab in September 2020, during coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, I could see what happened to me here. At the time when students come back to their home, I was "given" opportunity to sit in this lovely place, with no classes to teach, with no obligations whatsoever. These cute bastards (ehm) could now sit and think clearly all by himself, OK? So I don’t get any ideas for a while: I have every opportunity to do something, and I’m not getting any ideas. I believe that in a situation like this a kind of guilt or depression worms inside of me, and I begin to worry about not getting any ideas. And nothing happens. Still no ideas come.
Nothing happens because there’s not enough real activity and challenge: I’m not in contact with the educational guys. I don’t have to think how to answer questions from the students. Nothing!
In any thinking process there are moments when everything is going good and you’ve got wonderful ideas. Teaching is an interruption, and so it’s the greatest pain in the neck in the world. And then there are the longer periods of time when not much is coming to you. You’re not getting any ideas, and if you’re doing nothing at all, it drives you nuts! You can’t even say “I’m teaching my class.”
If you’re teaching a class, you can think about the elementary things that you know very well. These things are kind of fun and delightful. It doesn’t do any harm to think them over again. Is there a better way to present them? Are there any new problems associated with them? Are there any new thoughts you can make about them? The elementary things are easy to think about; if you can’t think of a new thought, no harm done; what you thought about it before is good enough for the class. If you do think of something new, you’re rather pleased that you have a new way of looking at it.
The questions of the students are often the source of new research. They often ask profound questions that I’ve thought about at times and then given up on, so to speak, for a while. It wouldn’t do me any harm to think about them again and see if I can go any further now. The students may not be able to see the thing I want to answer, or the subtleties I want to think about, but they remind me of a problem by asking questions in the neighborhood of that problem. It’s not so easy to remind yourself of these things.
So I find that teaching and the students keep life going, and I would never accept any position in which somebody has invented a happy situation for me where I don’t have to teach. Never.
— ΛLΟBΑΤИIƆ, a huge fans of 2NE1 (Bombshall) then BLΛƆKPIИK (Rosénator)
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