The world is full of teachers and mentors. Some of them work hard and try to leave an impact on their students in the hopes of making a small change in the community. I don’t know if they consciously think about making that change or if it is a by-product of them doing their job with integrity and honesty.
They do leave an impact which acts as a chain reaction, and in some cases, it is bigger and more visible, and in other cases, it is small but still so valuable for everyone. I have also had some teachers and mentors who positively impacted my life. I met one of these teachers at MAO College when I started studying for MSC Applied Psychology in 2015. Her name was Dr Fariha Iram Rizvi, but we used to call her Mam Fariha. She was a PhD in Psychology, and she taught us Research Psychology in the First year and Social Psychology in the second year.
As long as I remember, she was never late to our class and rarely skipped class. She always seemed energetic and had enthusiasm about teaching the subject. Although these are basic things, we say to each other all the time or teach students, like “Be Punctual”, “Be on Time”, and “Don’t skip class”, most of the time, people do not follow these rules, and I learned it from her that no matter what happens you have to be on time and be there for your job.
Her research psychology class was difficult because we had no experience with these concepts before. But because of her excellent teaching method, we gradually started to grasp the research concepts (at least I did, I cannot speak for anyone else, lol). Her way of interacting with the class, asking questions and always trying to keep the students engaged made it easy to learn in her classes. When the result came, and I got 80+ marks out of 100 in research, I knew that my teacher had a huge impact on this outcome.
Social Psychology is one of my favourite subject areas in Psychology, and that is also because Mam Fariha taught us social psychology in the second year of our MSC degree. I still remember how we debated certain social psychology topics with her, and she never discouraged healthy discussions in the classroom.
I still remember an incident when she was teaching us about Self Esteem, and I got into a discussion with mam that maybe self-esteem can also be negative in the sense that people who are doing bad things would still have high self-esteem so it can also be negative for some people to have high self-esteem. And although I knew some teachers would have acted differently in that situation, she did not discourage me and talked with me about this topic. Then some other students also gave their remarks, which made it a very healthy discussion. These moments taught me that even if someone has less knowledge than you, you should always hear their ideas and give them a thought.
It was only the subject of social psychology that I could top while studying at Punjab University, mainly because I already had a lot of interest in social psychology when I studied it from Mam Fariha at MAO College.
She was aware of some students who had trouble understanding concepts or were not very interactive in class. So she used to encourage them more, especially by asking them certain questions about the topics and including them in the conversation.
She had consistent words of encouragement for us and personally told me that I was a bright student and believed in me. It made me a better individual, and I think that is the role of mentors and teachers to improve and provide confidence to their students so they can be better individuals, which then helps them achieve things in their life no matter what path they choose to walk.
I would end this with a quote I read that I liked and think fits perfectly here.
“A mentor is someone who sees more talent and ability within you, than you see in yourself, and helps bring it out of you.”
Bob Proctor