Teachers, Have Our Kids On Loan

Back in secondary school, I was G&T in French. In non-stuck-up-secondary-school speak, it means I was so good at French that I could eventually come to speak it fluently, perhaps on par with a native, if I kept learning it. My engagement with the subject was great all the way up until my GCSEs. I was top of the class, and could quite happily communicate when we went to France on school trips. In Year 10, things changed when I had a really sour teacher who took a particular dislike to me. His lessons became my least favourite, and French, my least favourite subject. By the time I secured my B at the end of Year 11 - he'd told me I would be lucky to get a C - I'd decided never to study French again. I might go back on it at some point, but one teacher is all it took for French to go from a passion to a, er, dispassion.

I'm feeling something similar studying Film at university. My lecturer isn't unpleasant, but he's a bit long-winded, and the topic is one I've barely studied before. My previous module on films only had it as part of the work criteria, and I stayed far away from it. If my professor were a little more hands-on I might be getting on better with the subject, but COVID is getting in the way there, too, as I imagine it is everywhere. As a result, a topic I have very little confidence in remains that way, with only about a month left in the module and two essays due in in that time. I've done enough difficult essays in my life that I'll get through them both and maybe get a 2:1 even so, but this module - unlike another I'm just about to touch on - is hardly spoken for.

I've given two examples of when either poor teaching or poor circumstances affected my ability to function in a topic - as I'm sure both would affect and have affected my peers - but I want to give an example of when, despite all the odds being stacked against it, a new passion has come about thanks to the opposite of these. Copywriting is a module I picked, at first, just because I needed another professional module to round off my third year. I'd decided ahead of time I would focus on the professional pathway of my Creative Writing degree since that'd yield the best chances for a stable career. Within two lessons on my module, my professor - clearly passionate about the subject, and with a remarkable ability to break through misconceptions about advertising being boring board meetings and nought else - had made me fascinated with the subject. So much so that, after about six weeks more lessons and lots of independent research, I've finally stumbled upon the career I actually want.

In the extra-curricular realm, development of skills like 3D modelling and level design has usually been because I've taken inspiration from someone or something else. Leading a team of forty hobbyists/professionals, I've had ample opportunity to work with talented people that make me really interested in their subject area. I'm something of a jack-of-all-trades, and given I'm not interested in becoming a professional in the games development industry (as mentioned above, copywriting, please!), this works really well in hobbyist environments. Being able to have technical conversations and know roughly what I'm talking about in as many fields as possible is crucial to leading a team. I have specialists who excel in one field to round off the skills I have and do things better than I ever could, but that doesn't mean I don't learn new interests from them. A talented sound designer I know helped me make my first semi-successful steps into learning about sound design and the process of developing weapon foley and so on; an experienced and friendly 3D modeller has pushed me to pursue my relatively decent experience in that field and develop it further; and a very friendly, if very eccentric, level designer I know has also pushed me to develop my skills in awe of what he can do with a tool that is nearly two decades old in an engine the same age.

The people that surround you - teachers, professors, or just friends who are skilled in ways you're not - can affect your learning in all sorts of productive - and unproductive - ways. What I've learned to try and do is surround myself with people who encourage the former, and learn when to say goodbye to the people that ultimately result in the latter. At the end of the day, we all deserve some encouragement for the good things that we try to do. The people you encourage can encourage you, too.