Lessons I Learned Teaching in My 20s
God loves me.
I can’t sleep. I toss and turn in my bed replaying certain scenes I’ve lived through—so mundane, so ordinary. If you could overhear, you’d be bored by the nothingness of it all, but surprised at how much space they took in my head.
My heart would not stop racing—it felt like an endless stream of horses thundering, and my chest was the arena. Every one of their loaded feet slammed against my ribs, the weight crushing into me.
That’s what my anxiety looked like.
Anxiety takes different forms for everyone. That was mine. Such an unruly beast. The more you attempted to slaughter it, the stronger it got. I was fright in human form. Fidgety. Irritable. A radio of worst-case scenarios you couldn’t turn off.
Until…
I found God.
My shelter became the feeling when my head touched the ground in prayer. My unloading dock—my anxiety unpacking itself. I felt so much lighter when I lifted my head. Like I had left the weight of the world on the mat.
It wasn’t the formal prayers. It was talking to God the way I talk to myself—unfiltered and unmasked.
And the reminder that saved me?
God loves me.
A Series: Lessons I Learned Teaching in My 20s: عيب
We’ve raised kids who wait for the night, to hide from society’s watchful eyes, but forget that God never sleeps.
We’ve raised kids that think that as long as no one knows, it does not matter what you do.
How can عيب be more powerful than حرام?
How can society’s perception be more powerful to us than God’s?
Can we start now at least?
A Series: Lessons I Learned Teaching in My 20s
As a teacher, there were so many days my entire world was shattering, yet I stood there enthusiastically explaining something so relatively insignificant like the product life cycle. Visibly, I would be smiling, making jokes, being hyper-aware of the surroundings, and calling out the names of students who weren’t paying attention. Internally, when I stopped talking, I could hear my insides screaming unmercifully. The gut-wrenching agony scraping its hands, desperately trying to crawl out of my throat—if I let it out, there’s no going back. I can’t now. I have to finish the lecture. We’re already behind and exams are approaching. I swallow hard, shoving it deep, feeling the fallback in my bones, and continue explaining why the maturity phase of a product’s life cycle is critical.
Once the class is over and everyone leaves, I sit there with my shoulders stooping involuntarily. I try to sit straight again, but the grief is too heavy.
how do we control the damage?
Whether it’s the promotion you really wanted, a loved one, a relationship you thought would work out, a rejection, a heartbreak—how do you not let that one loss seep into everything else? How do you protect yourself from losing everything?
A series: Lessons I learned Teaching in my 20s.
It feels like I’m reaching out into my chest and extracting my heart, turning it around in my hand, examining it from all angles. Washing every stain, dipping it in cold water, sterilizing it—and some stains are harder to wash out than others. Some remain longer than others. Some require more attempts than others. Most of the time it hurts. Scrubbing until it’s fully clean and putting it back into my chest until the next opportunity to cleanse it again. If I wait too long, the stains add up and it becomes more difficult and painful.
Am I a good person?
A series: Lessons I learned Teaching in my 20s.
I had to pay a heavy price for my kindness. So many times I have chosen to be kind and in return: the kindness that I had to physically scoop out of my soul and hand it over on the palm of my hands was taken from me, thrown on the ground, and stepped over while I stood there with a hand on my heart assessing the gaping hole where my kindness resided.
Why was it valued at so little, when it took so much from me?
Was it me who valued it at so little sharing it so recklessly with everyone?
A Series: Lessons I Learned Teaching in My 20s.
It’s NEVER about who you were.
There’s nothing I despise more than holding someone’s past against them.
I don’t care that you got kicked out of three universities for failing.
I don’t care if you were an addict.
I don’t care if you were expelled for behavioral conduct last semester.
I don’t care if you took a class with me and failed by absences.
I don’t care if you posted a video on social media that you regret.
I don’t care if you went to jail.
I don’t care who you used to be.
A Series: Lessons I Learned Teaching in My 20s
One of the mistakes I made, frequently, early in my teaching career and still catch myself doing sometimes is assuming things about people based on how they look, what they say, or how they behave.
We all wear our emotions and experiences differently. Sometimes we say things we don’t mean or resonate with. Sometimes we look the opposite of how we feel. Sometimes we do things that are not indicative of who we are right now or what we want to achieve. The most dangerous thing you can do as an educator, or human I guess, is make assumptions.
I hope one day she reads this and realizes this is about her, you changed me.
A Series: Lessons I Learned Teaching in My 20s
Everyone has potential.
I started teaching during the wild, post-pandemic times—mask-wearing, social distancing, and the “please mute yourself” era of online classes. My first students? The ones who had no other choice, but diploma. The ones the system left behind, with every stereotype stacked against them.
But instead of low expectations, I went full Harvard-mode: strict discipline, punctuality, and zero tolerance for slacking. Why? Because I knew they weren’t dumb. The system was.
And guess what? When you mix high expectations with a sprinkle of “I believe in you,” magic happens. They delivered, and I’m still clapping for them.
Sometimes, all anyone needs is someone who sees their potential and refuses to roll their eyes at it.