INHALE. EXHALE. INHALE.

“I think a lot of people wear stress like a badge of honor.” (A, 1972 - )


I reached the campus at 7 AM, with a big knot in my tummy. At 8 AM I was to give a lecture on a topic which was never that interesting for me (and for most, ah, normal people I know), to a horde of natural-hormone-induced youngsters I never met in my whole entire life. And why, and how, in God’s earth did I get to do it in the first place?

Well. One of my theses supervisors, apparently thought “Giving lectures to some of the best university students in Indonesia” would give me “a good challenge”. To improve my teaching skills, he said. Man, he had never seen me teaching nor lecturing, and already he concluded that my skills were lacking. This is the same supervisor who wanted me to write a book, mind you. I won’t comment further, but you can go on making your own conclusions.

So. I tried to breathe normally, 7 AM this morning, trying to remind myself that teaching had been my only job for the last 7 years. That I had lectured in front of young geniuses, young retards, old geniuses, and old retards. That I had had classes where the students sat still and stayed quiet, too damn quiet I was scared that I was disturbing them by yakking for 2-hours non-stop. That I had had, on the other hand, a class in which the students rudely chatted and ignored my yakking, to the point where I thought I could climb on the table and started taking off my clothes without anyone noticing. In short, I had nothing to worry about. University students are mostly the kind of people I always enjoy the companion of. I like teaching. Darn, I didn’t know what I was gonna say about the topic, but I had been clueless about half of my topics my whole teaching career.

So I got out of the car, went into a building and connected to the net. This was in 7.15 AM, and being so scared about teaching “some of the best university students in Indonesia”, I searched for “stress-reliever” through Google. (Note to self: Do not ever take important decisions at 7:15 AM). I landed on a page which gave instructions on deep-breathing exercise, and was halfway thru expanding and contracting my tummy in the hope of doing a proper deep-breathing, when I saw that AB was online.

I quickly told him why I was online, no, not “so early did you just wake up”, but about to teach at 8 AM. And why did I have to teach in a university which didn’t register my name in its salary list, he wanted to know. I felt so bitter when I told him that it was my supervisor’s doing, and to console myself, I told him that it was nothing unusual. My friends who were research-students in other universities were also made to do it by their supervisors.

“Of course he’ll ask you to teach…because you’re a lecturer,” he said. “And your friends, they’re lecturers too, right? If you were a CEO of a big company, rest assured he’ll ask you for something else.”

Sitting there dumbly doing the deep-breathing exercise, my stress-relief actually came from his last sentence. Suddenly I wasn’t so mad anymore. That was what I actually felt: not as much scared of having to teach “some of the best university students in Indonesia” as to being so mad because deep down, deep under the sorry excuse of “improving my teaching skills”, I knew my supervisor was taking advantage of me and I didn’t have the courage to confront him about it. But AB was right, even if I wasn’t a lecturer, my supervisor would have asked me to do something else in his favour. He sees his students as mere resources, and man, he will find the resources that he wants in you, whoever you are, whatever you do.

Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Expanding tummy, not raising shoulders.

“Just enjoy it,” he added. Seeing the word “enjoy” in my screen reminded me that it was the very word I had always associated to teaching. Not scary, not stressful, the word is “enjoyable”.

With that, I went to search for my classroom, eager to meet “some of the best university students in Indonesia”, knowing I actually looked forward to spending the next two hours enjoying myself.