Since I quit my job in April 2009, I had been working on a a few projects as an entrepreneur. Although I still haven’t been able to crack that open opportunity that I have been trying to exploit, I am still going to go on and capture it until I succeed.
Since I had no office place to work at, and I couldn’t afford one as well… I was using the library at SZABIST (my university) as a business incubator to carry on with my work processes. To cut the long story short, I was lucky to be present at the university as aspiring new entrepreneur, when I got the chance of teaching the “Entrepreneurship Course” to the BBA students.
To be very honest, I was one of the weakest speakers in my class and when I got this opportunity, for a second I was fearing the consequences that could have happened. With my heart beating at a 4x faster rate, I kept on working on my first lecture for a week. I always intended to teach, and had also been teaching Maths after I did my O’levels when I first started a Maths tuition center named “Mathemagics” at my home with one of my ex-teachers. But that was an entirely different experience.
To teach at a university level, was something that I thought of doing a few years down the line. But as they say that, opportunity knocks the door very few times in a lifetime, so I thought of going ahead with it. It was the summer semester, and I was all prepared for my first lecture when I reached in the classroom well before time. Students, as usual, came in late … and some of them had this surprised look on their faces as they couldn’t realize I came in to teach them. Either it was the name, or it was the fact that I wasn’t an old chap… but it was funny as some of them confirmed it from me more than twice whether I am the teacher for Entrepreneurship. Extremely nervous in my first class, I started off the lecture … and I was shocked that I was moving ahead so quickly with my ‘power point’ slides, that I almost completed my 3 hour lecture in 1 hour. Damn! I was nervous … couldn’t help it! It was hilarious … oh well.. I had some substitute audio visual material.. and I put up a half an hour informative speech by “Steve Jobs” at Stanford. Its one of my favorite speeches… it motivates me every time I watch it. I cooled myself down while the video was playing for the next thirty minutes. And as soon as the video got over.. I had a small interactive session and gave a break! The break actually helped me as I planned and prepared myself. It also helped me organize my thoughts rather than rushing with the chapter. After that… there was no looking back. And now.. I believe that I have finally overcome the weakness of public speaking.
I got an evaluation of about 96% in the summers which is one of the highest at college. I would like to thank the BBA Coordinator at that point in time who kept the trust in me and gave me a further of two courses to teach in the fall semester 2009. I have taught about 3 classes by now which makes up to (26+23+28) 77 students in all. I tried be a different teacher altogether, tried to be more practical than bookish and kept more a friendly attitude. I don’t know how the students really felt… and if they learnt anything at all.
A lot of students were nice and understanding. Plus… they were serious about taking the course. Some were just trying to get off with an A grade because they thought I was a “thand” teacher. The rest had such a careless attitude… that my patience was being tested.. which finally ended up in me bursting with anger in the last class. The problem is.. that a lot of people don’t realize the issues the opposite person might have been going through.. and they just care about themselves only. A lot of students tried to act quite smart when they tried to trick me with various … ‘stupid questions’ to be honest, which of course made no sense. I don’t know where they get this much of over smartness… its going to effect them in the long run if they don’t correct it right now.
I plan to take a break with teaching for some time because I have other areas to concentrate on. But it was a great experience as I also went on to take some extra classes of Marketing Principles for a colleague in Iqra University. Apart from this I was honored to be called in as a guest speaker at various places. All in all .. it was great knowing a lot of students, and it was a pleasure teaching them.
