We get what we give

“You get what you give” [song by New Radicals]

At the end of class, Arys got a spontaneous round of applause from the students. 

This was the first time in nine months that Arys had taught a Physics lesson to college students again, and had they been asked to do it even only a month ago, it probably would have been much harder. 

Over the past few weeks, though, Arys has slowly been finding their place again, even professionally. 

This class was only a “once-off”, covering for their supervisor who couldn’t make it for his own personal reasons and had asked Arys for this favor with plenty of notice. Despite it not being a “big deal”, Arys spent the whole morning preparing for this class. The perfectionist in them wouldn’t allow them to just hand-wave through a lesson on the propagation of electromagnetic waves through matter. But it also went deeper than that: it was love motivating them. 

Arys loves Physics and they love teaching, sharing it. 

So they prepared the lesson meticulously and then walked to campus, more than a little anxious since they didn’t know what to really expect: what would the classroom be like? What would the students be like? How would Arys come across to them? Had Arys’s supervisor even told the students to expect a sub for yesterday’s class? 

As Arys walked to campus, feeling the anxiousness rise in their chest, they reminded themselves, as they do in tricky moments on a climbing route: “You’ve done this hundreds of times before. This is your jam”!   

The anxiety was still there at the beginning of class, just like at the beginning of a hard route on an unknown wall. But then Arys let go and settled into their “instructor mode”, into their own special persona of when they teach Physics. And the energy, the enthusiasm, the spontaneous connection with the audience, even the love, all just started to pour out again as if they had been doing it all this time with no interruption of nine months. Arys wasn’t thinking: they were just in the flow of the moment, of that class. And the students felt it and responded, reflecting back all that spontaneous positive energy. 

At the end of the lesson, when time was up, the students spontaneously — at first awkwardly, then more convinced — broke out into an applause. 

Many of them asked whether Arys would be teaching any of the following lessons for this course or any other class, and several openly said they wished Arys would teach more. Two students at the very end even went as far as saying that this had been the best class they had had in the whole semester. 

Arys was thankful for the face-covering they were wearing, as it helped hide their blushing. 

These comments made their day, rewarding them for their hard work in preparing for the class. The comments were also good, and somewhat necessary, reminders. Of their capacities. Of the place and space that they can take up. Of the importance of finding and maintaining a balance between humility and knowing one’s worth. Of the power of love: because it is love — the love of Physics, the love of teaching, the love of sharing, the love of helping other people learn and grow, too — that allows Arys’s classes to shine. 

And of the fact that we so often get what we give.  

“…

Don’t let go, you’ve got the music in you 

… 

You only get what you give 

… ”