Day Five - HRI CAMP 2016

​Contributor: Raffi Gevorgyan

I never truly understood the hardships that came with teaching until I tried my hand at it.

Thank you Mr. Bilsky, I appreciate you ever more slightly. Looking back, I wasn’t exactly the best student. Was it the borderline ADHD that came with the age? Was it because I was not intelligent? Who knows. I’ve almost always found school boring. I always had a problem with following directions. Every single paper I got back, it said in big bold letters, with a coffee stain covering it, “FOLLOW DIRECTIONS”. I can only theorize why I did that. Probably, I thought it to be more fun to try my own method to doing things. Did it work most of the time? Don’t think so. Was it necessary to my personal development? I’m no developmental psychologist, but I’d like to think so. My teachers were constantly frustrated with my defiance. Now I face a similar situation. The question I ask myself is, do I hypocritically crack down on this type of behavior in order to make my educating them easier and more conventional? Or do allow this sort of individuality and creativity thrive and grow at the cost of my temporary sanity and energy? There’s nothing I’d like more than to make beautiful people out of all of them (on the inside that is). At the same time, I’m only human. I have my own personal limits and after a certain point I become more inefficient and, I’m afraid to say, more ineffective because I might not be able to make the right choice, no matter how small it is, that could snowball into a major decision that makes a huge difference in the lives of another. So what do I do? I might be bold enough to say that every real educator faces this obstacle. Some choose the conventional route and sometimes it works; others choose to make the great personal sacrifice to go the extra way. Which side will I fall on?

Only time can tell.....