Story of my Teachers

I have dedicated this story to my students in the Dreamer batch where I teach Full stack development to some very sharp minds.

I wasn’t a bright student in school and had major disconnect with my teachers throughout my educational journey. Maybe some stories will help create a better picture.

In school,

There were ups and downs but nothing unusual. I was not a hardworking student like my elder brother and friends were more important than studies. An average performer who used to daydream about floods, earthquakes and robberies in school just before the result days.

Cool story — “ My elder brother got 100 out of 100 on the Math board exam and it was the first time in school’s history. Our Math teacher Mr. Sushanto, was especially pumped up about this news. He was smiling proudly while announcing my brothers achievements to whole class but suddenly turned his face towards me and looked with dead eyes. Btw, Mr. Sushanto was a huge guy somewhere around 6’6 and had our math answer sheets for last mid-terms in his hand. Now you can imagine my fear. When a teacher stares at you for that long then other students also start staring at you in curiosity, turning my fear into terror. Finally, the bomb was dropped and he announced to the class that “elder brother Math topper and younger brother Math failure”.

That was a rough day. You know, Physical punishment was taken seriously those days. Pretty sure, my age group can relate that teachers were not used to holding back their emotions. Good thing, I was not alone. Me and the boys would share the sorrow.

In college,

Friends became more important and I took my friendship to another level. We ate, slept, fought, and sometimes studied together. However, my recklessness during exam nights left me behind in college while my friends got offers from good companies. Without them, attending classes was getting difficult. I realized, there was no other alternative than to sit at the front desk and take notes. I took it as a personal challenge. Somehow, that was miraculous. Fast forward two years and I got decent grades and was able to sit on my laptop for hours for studies without any movies or games.

Cool story — “There was this DSA teacher, one of the strictest faculties I had ever seen. My friends (me included) would change our paths if we saw him. I don’t know if it was fear of getting fewer assignment marks or him spotting us in the class for DSA problem solving but nevertheless, we all feared him equally. The last benches were occupied first in his class so latecomers had to sit in front. I was always on time for his classes. Sadly, one day I got late and had to sit on the first bench. Even though he knew I was a lost cause, but that fateful day when he saw me on the first bench he must have thought to himself — “Maybe today! Maybe today this imbecile will learn pointers concept”. To make things worse, I was completely out of my senses that time due to an offering from a friend, just an hour before the class started. I remember standing up for a long time and mumbling something something in between. It was embarrassing!

Fast forward to my final year, Me and that same faculty were sitting in his chamber thinking hard on a research paper. Turns out there are great benefits of sitting in front and being put in a difficult spot on a daily basis. I actually got smarter. I was treated like a junior colleague and had privileges. We received recommendation for my team to visit IISc Bengaluru for our final project. We also drank tea together outside on the final days. And to be honest, that tea felt more rewarding than my convocation. Maybe there was a hidden message that someday you’ll become successful, don’t forget us on those days.

When I shared this story with my friends they said I am joking. They saw a different Neetish when they left college and heard stories of a different Neetish when I left college. So they were curious about what had actually happened in between. I told them - “I just sat on the first bench daily and took notes”. They still don’t believe me!

After college,

I was doing few interesting projects with my friends and also took freelance projects whenever offered. There were so many confusing but hot technologies and I was in desperate need of a professional guide. Was looking for someone who can tell me the secrets of a great programmer. Therefore, was hustling a lot back then and never shied away from pro bono projects. Became very active in a programming community and would push a lot of interesting codes/answers daily to help other learners. There was this person from USA who took interest in my profile and would read all my codes. He was a hardcore programmer who had been coding professionally for the last 23 years and saw potential in me. He also invited me to join his team of SOLID full-stack devs in Bengaluru. Btw, his name is David Carroll, a well known celebrity in sololearn community of millions of programmers.

I found a teacher/mentor

I thought I knew programming very well, but then I realized it’s one thing to know something and it’s another to implement it in real life under deadline pressure. Somehow, I persevered! I was given this golden opportunity and it’s once in a lifetime kind of thing.

I had immense faith in David because He gave me a shot and took out time from his super heavy schedule (5 children, 3 projects, and 3 dev teams across USA and India) to respond to my stupid questions.

Fast forward a few years, and I became that superstar dev that David had envisioned for me.

It was only possible because I was able to proceed those 3 years with utmost confidence that I am doing the best thing possible and expected to fail at these specific points. I had a guardian angel watching my moves and sharing personalized feedback based on my velocity, not the generalized ones you get from YouTube mentors or if you try alone.

Ending Notes

Back then when I was trying to prove myself, it never occurred to me that someone was guiding me and taking those hard decisions for me. When I became a senior developer and started pair programming with my Juniors and you guys, then this dawned upon me -

“My goodness! This sucks!! How was David keeping up with me?”

Lol, jokes apart, teaching is amazing and my efforts are paid-off when I see LinkedIn messages of my students bagging amazing offers. Maybe you find your David in me or maybe someone else but on this Teacher’s day, I wish you find your David. I hope to work with you guys someday.