Sir Shabbir

It's been 2yrs since I've been taught in proper English by a teacher. The predominant medium of instruction in my university is Urdu, not to mention the frequent specks of Punjabi strewn about for humorous touch.  Language shouldn't be a barrier to learning, especially when one is taught in one's mother tongue. But as I've realized to great disappointment, that's not always true.

Being taught in Urdu while the textbooks followed and the notes to be written are in English is preposterous! The constant process of translation in the mind usually ends up in some fundamental part of the teacher's spoken sentence being skipped. No matter how hard I try to avoid it, something or the other of essence always goes missing and somehow it doesn't feel like I've actually understood much from the teacher's words. We speak in Urdu amongst family members and colleagues in university so it seems like anyone saying anything in Urdu has got to be talking informally. Since baba too speaks in English with us whenever describing anything of literary value, exposure to studies and all things related in Urdu has been zero.

But today for the subject ECD( Electronic Circuit Design ), we found that Sir Shabbir is going to teach us. We'd heard all sorts of comments about him: he was strict; tolerated no nonsense; taught in a way as to scare students away from Electronics; spoke in a way that was difficult to grasp…something of a learned tyrant.

All that turned out to be mere prejudice.

Just after our first class with him, I knew ECD had GOT to be one of my favourite courses! Sir taught in amazing English, and for the first time since A'levels I followed every word of a teacher. And not just that; he's one of the most proper and spontaneous teachers I've studied with. He kept the class in a highly interactive mood and was superb with the basics of the subject (though its true most of the class was just b-l-a-n-k to his questions which dug at square one of Electronics!) 

The first encounter whirled a jigsaw of memories from school in my mind and for a couple of minutes I was back in a different period of life. It thankfully didn't take long to recover from the memory-charm as Sir had started explaining some fundamental everyday Electronics jargon.

Though it's just the first week of semester, I know I'm going to have a great time with ECD. It's been some time since I felt so great with a subject and I'm hoping I won't be disappointed in my perception.