Chattering in Class

I saw a post on LinkedIn that brought back a lot of memories for me. Click on the link and read it. Its point is that if you are not seen at work and no one sees you or takes you seriously despite your immense efforts and arriving early and leaving late, it recommends you do a few things. For example, it says be interactive in meetings and don't just be a listener. Lift others up and praise others' good work. Find a sponsor and so on, which you'd better read the post yourself. It also has good designs. Now why did I say it brought back memories? I'll tell you now.

From a certain point on, I liked being active in classes. I had learned from experience that whenever I did this, I could both listen to the professor and the lesson and, by virtue of this very act, gain a little credibility for myself. Naturally, my grades also got higher. If I was good, I would somewhat prove myself before the exam paper. A little credibility that later helped me find a job. To meet people with whom associating taught me a lot, and much more. Although these antics sometimes cut my own head off with their sharp edge. If a professor didn't like me, he would humiliate me more, and I would become the laughingstock of the class. Although I was too brazen for that and would dive headfirst into the matter myself and burst out laughing. Bless Dr. Mashayekhi's memory. He would mercilessly humiliate me in public. One day, right in the middle of class after my pontifications, he pulled his ewer out of his bag and said: "Mr. Azadi! You are the master of fuzzy answers. Your words are neither wrong nor right." And he washed me away (The doctor had various styles of doing his work. Right in the middle of my sentence, he would suddenly continue the lesson. He would suddenly turn his face away. Or he would say get up and go erase the board). He was right, of course. I really was blathering because I didn't know the complete answer, but I knew some generalities of it, but as those IELTS teachers say, I didn't have good Supportive sentences. But well, in the end, I both got a high grade in his class, and later on, he treated me better, and it helped me a lot.

There was an important point behind doing this, and that was that I did this when a course was really important to me (for whatever reason). For example, if the grade was important to me and I didn't have the capability (and still don't) to rack up points for myself on the paper during the exam. I had to pull these stunts to clean up the mess and filth I made on the paper. Or because ultimately I wanted to apply to some godforsaken place where grades mattered to them. Or simply the lesson was fascinating and I very simply and honestly wanted to be good at it. Is that bad?! And all of this meant that grades mattered to me in my bachelor's. Though not at any cost. Unlike some of our classmates for whom grades didn't matter in front of us, but they would cry silently under the blanket for a grade.

An interesting thing would happen. Many of my friends, close and distant, kept trying to put me down saying why do you talk so much in class. Jokingly and seriously. But some of them really never left my mind. Those who said this from the bottom of their hearts but slipped their true feelings into my brain amidst laughter. Clearly, they wanted to force upon me something that they themselves were not interested in and some of them didn't even know how to do. In the land of the blind, the one who can see is pointed out. But as I said, I was too brazen for these things, and well, having thick skin came in handy. This incident and those people never left my mind, just to see where they would eventually end up with those snide remarks.

Interestingly, among them, some who were capable people themselves but simply had no understanding of the importance of this matter, finally hit a hard spot and realized that no one is going to spend time carefully extracting your precious gem just because you are mute. They will run over you with a bulldozer. And they themselves gradually started speaking up. They went into various meetings and saw that if they don't speak, they get kicked off their chair with a slap on the back of the neck and someone else takes their place. These guys, however, because they are capable people, are usually more or less arrogant, and this arrogance of theirs never allows them to come and say that the previous policy was wrong. But you, as the eternal and everlasting external observer, see that this change of opinion has sprouted arms and legs and is shouting itself from afar.

There is another group who never understood. They also fall into two subcategories. One category would be those who will probably stumble upon this LinkedIn post one day and say: What wisdom! Let's go kiss Mr. Amin Dezvarei's (the author of the LinkedIn post whose last name I don't know how to write) mouth for giving us a life lesson. What a sage, and suddenly with one LinkedIn post!! With "swallow your frog", their lives will be transformed page by page.

The second subcategory are those who are both unaware of this problem and satisfied with this situation. Happy, free, and satisfied, and how wonderful.

Of course, there is another category who, although they don't fit in the same team with those, are important to me. Those who never told you why you talk. They were busy with their own work and their own values and kept that to themselves. Those who themselves didn't need to be seriously active but had no issue with this matter. If necessary, they would speak, and when they spoke, it wasn't fuzzy, as the doctor would say. Or at least, maybe they weren't comprehensive, but they were correct. They later adopted this same policy, and everyone I know who was like this has now reached a good place relative to their own measure and circumstances. These people... these are the ones I wished I was like. But well, there's a world of difference between my moon and the revolving moon.

I said these things because sometimes I think about those days, or suddenly with a spark, I go back to the past and realize that there is no great need to wet our pants in front of the massive ego of just anyone. Many things don't have a universal prescription. The words of these gentlemen are not gelofens that you can take and get well when you ache from the tip of your toe to the top of your head. You have to write your own rational prescription yourself. There's no other way.