My esteem for teachers is very high. I value what they do, what they provide, and what they stand for. But most of all, I value what they are. Teachers, just that. Educators. Instructors.

Really, teachers are the backbone of society. Just imagine one without them. With each generation, the mechanics of teaching are becoming more apparently crucial—and teachers are wholly responsible. The mindedness of our posterity, our posterity’s facility to make decisions, discover, and learn, are all in the hands of today’s teachers.

Teachers are everywhere. They exist outside of the classroom, the lecture hall, outside the apple-on-a-desk definition. They can be your colleagues, your peers, your friends; even someone considerably younger than you, even a complete stranger. We are constantly learning from others, constantly improving ourselves with what we gain from teachers.

But the truest teachers are those who devote themselves to through a profession. These “formal” teachers are the whole reason why professions exist, why they’re possible. Expertise in a field has its seed in knowledge, a seed that teachers plant. Without engineering professors, we wouldn’t have engineers. Without Ph.D.s in biology, we wouldn’t have stem cell cures for diabetes. Without compassionate grade school teachers, we wouldn’t have young, driven individuals. In fact, we wouldn’t have teachers without teachers.

As a student, I want to be a teacher. Perhaps in the formal sense, as an actual school teacher or professor, perhaps not—but however it’s defined, I’ll always strive to be the best teacher I can be.

Over the years, I’ve constructed a moral obligation for myself: to teach what I learn. Looking back, I’ve always had a natural instinct to do just that, whether as a tutor at Kumon, an NHS tutor in biology and French, an Arabic teacher at the ICM, a drawing teacher at the Plymouth community center, or as a swimming lesson instructor at the local pool. I won’t hesitate to say that I pride myself in being a teacher. But no matter how qualified I make myself seem, I’ll always be as much of a student as I am a teacher.

Learning is important to me. Teaching is equally so.

See also: 5 criteria that make a “good” teacher

Do not read while eating something delicious.

It’s probably abnormal and indicative of a disturbed mind for someone to enjoy animal dissections.

Make of that what you will.

The first time I saw something fleshy, purposely cut up, and put on display was at one of those elementary school science family fun nights back in second grade. It was a cow eyeball, neatly cross-sectioned for every grimy little elementary school boy to ogle at and every cootie-ridden girl to scream at. The scientist at the cow eyeball station had kindly volunteered to teach us kids about the eye and its parts, exhibiting each soggy component as he talked about it.

At the time, second-grader Ishmam could’ve cared less about eye anatomy.
I just liked it ’cause it was gross.

At a summer biology camp eight years later, it was my turn to do the dissecting. As a biology class staple, tons of dissections awaited me on the curriculum, the first of which was a chicken wing.

If there’s one thing I learned from poking and prodding through something that could’ve easily belonged in a KFC bucket, it’s that chicken skin is a pain to remove. But after analyzing the muscles under the layers of greasy fat and skin, I was surprised by the anatomical complexity of something as simple as a chicken wing.

By the end of that camp, I had completed a full circle, dissecting a sheep heart, sheep brain, and sheep eyeball—very similar in anatomy to that of a cow eye. Perhaps what threw me off every time, even before I saw the disectee, was the smell. If you have any idea what formaldehyde smells like, you’ll know what a poorly ventilated room full of sheep hearts smells like.

Although I’m not a particularly faint-hearted person, I could easily see how someone might be grossed out to the point of becoming vegetarian. I won’t hesitate to admit that the sheep eye was scary; it still had the eyelid and eyelashes, looking straight at its dissector. I offered my partner, Jeff, to make the first cut. After many minutes of nervous whining, we finally managed. Eventually, the nervousness melted away and we probably ended up having a little too much fun, shamelessly playing around with the slimy vitreous body and discovering the lens’s bouncability.

The following school year, I’d signed up for Human Anatomy, well aware of its notorious cat dissections. I didn’t know what to expect considering I’d never dissected an entire animal. But when the cats arrived part-way through the term, I was genuinely nervous. Gone were the days of chicken wings.

As our dissection group received our cat, the first thing I noticed was the smell. The second thing I noticed was that the cat was really heavy, literally saturated with formaldehyde. The third thing I noticed: the smell.

We spent a number of days on the cats, taking the time to excavate almost every muscle and organ. Needless to say, some parts were more disgusting than others. It was only on the last day of dissection that we named our cat Sebastian. A few minutes after naming, he was off to the incinerator.

I won’t go into details, (as if I haven’t gone into enough detail already) but I learned a surprising amount from something that I thought would be a challenge for my gut more than anything.

That same year in AP Biology, we dissected flowers. It was refreshing.

Anyway, the whole purpose of this post wasn’t to disgust, (if I have, bonus points for me) but rather to document all the things I’ve dissected. I know it’s weird to think about, but each of those dissections only re-livened my interest in biology. And I don’t ever want to forget them. As I adjust myself to the idea of a future in biological studies, it’s not hard to envision more dissections along the way.