about the best job in the whole wide World...

                                                    Robin Williams @ Dead Poets Society

= = = = = = =

Did I write "job" (at the title)?

I am sorry, I didn't mean to...

But, when they ask me... I am not saying that I am an "Associate Professor" and all these rather "pompous" words.

What I am saying is this: I am just a teacher... Sever letters, one word...

But, I feel really proud when ex-students of mine call me that... (teacher).

I feel really proud when my students as they leave the lecture theater, they tell me "thank you". So precious these 2 words...

As I am writing these lines, I am having Cyrus on my side and James Blunt at a small speaker...

I just watched "Good Will Hunting" with my most favourite actor (ever) : Robin Williams.

He is a psychologist at the film and a Teacher (capital T!).

I am not going to spoil it to you - it's a must watch it, again and again...

For many reasons... (also Dead Poets Society is a must watch, especially this clip).

- - -

Pause - James is singing a song about Dads...

And this song...makes me... a bit emotional...

- - -

Anyway, my Dad is up there now, smiling to me...

- - -

Ok, back to what I was talking about.

My Mum was a teacher of Chemistry in a secondary school in Athens. 

She is long retired now but she keeps reminding me this:

"give your best to your students,

so you can write history to their hearts

and this is, for us teachers,

a small, but so valuable, immortality"

I don't know if I can ever manage that...

most probably not,

but the way I am seeing this "job" is this:

1. it's not a job!

2. being in the lecture theater and talk about food, food science, the specifics of it but also about the wider picture (where food is not just a material, but a medicine and so many more...) is a blessing,

3. most jobs have KPIs, sheets with data, excel files, powerpoint slides with sales, deficits, gains, profits, blah blah blah - teaching is above all that...

At the end of the day, the biggest joy for a teacher is when her/his students follow their dreams and make them real.

Because, at the end of the day, everything is about this spark that metamorphoses conventional to unique._