2007 ~ 2012 |
A NEW CAMPUS AND THE BIRTH OF SASS
To All the Lecturers Who Have Had the
Misfortune of Having Me as Your Student
Kat Tan
“Ms Tan, you’re not a teacher.”
“I’m not? What have I been doing all this time, then?”
72
Teaching
is hard;
whatever
you’ve
heard
about
teachers
having
an easy
life is
a LIE!
“No, no, I didn’t mean it like that! I just meant you’re
not a teacher.”
“How is that different from what you just said?”
“Aiyah! Hey, help me la!”
“I think what my less-than-verbose friend is trying to
say is that you’re not like other teachers.”
“Verbose? Impressive. And used in the right context
too! Good to know all those vocab lessons I’ve been
shoving down your throats haven’t been a waste of
energy.”
“Aiyo, ‘cher! Trying to give you compliment here!”
“Are you? Then why didn’t you just say so?”
“ARGHHHHH!”
I wish I could say that was a typical conversation
between me and my students—but in all honesty,
this is a rare moment where I get to take sadistic
pleasure in engaging them in attempted witty banter.
Most of the time, reactions to my sarcasm during
lessons are like those cartoon moments when a
lone bird flies overhead with a sad little tweet—
only considerably less funny and a great deal
more pathetic.
One of my colleagues once asked me where all the
snark comes from. The snark itself, that’s an innate
talent—but as for the desire to use it on my students
constantly? That, I’d have to say, breeds from an
entire semester of sitting through Dr Andrew Ng’s
lessons where snark and sarcasm were his weapons
of choice when dealing with us during Authorship
and Writing.
Except unlike our dear Gothic literature expert, who
could execute his flair for the language and utilised
every twelve-dollar word in his artillery to ensure
that we lesser beings cowered in his loquacious
presence, I don’t have the privilege of showing off an
impressive vocabulary or my university-bred intellect.
Anything more than two difficult syllables and I’m
left facing a class of blank stares, confused faces
and metaphorical crickets chirping happily in the
background.
An awkward silence does not a conducive learning
environment make.
You have no idea how much I long to be like Dr
Andrew, to walk into class equipped with nothing
but my mind and spend the next two hours blowing
everyone out of the water with my literary brilliance—
and best of all, know on some level that most of the
students in the classroom would be soaking it all in
with their frantic scribbles on paper or convenient
recording devices left on the front row to capture every
second of my shared wisdom.
And of course, pause in my monologue every so often
to make snarky remarks like: “[enter clueless student’s
name here], what is this penile-looking contraption?”
(True story: that clueless student was me and
Dr Andrew had been referring to the indeed rather
phallic-looking recorder I used to carry around with
me specifically for his lectures. Back then, the age of
smartphones hadn’t fully crested the technological
dawn yet, so we had to make do with … interestingly-
shaped alternatives)