Eric Tian

The brilliance of stars would be invisible without the vast darkness of space behind them.

Do not wash away the difficult moments in life. They provide the contrast needed to appreciate the beautiful ones.

The teacher’s role is to gradually make themselves unnecessary.

A math teacher doesn’t do the student’s homework for them and call it a day because that’s useless. The student has not learnt anything. The teacher teaches the student how to do math, how to think like someone who’s good at math. The student at that moment perhaps might only want their homework to be done, but the teacher knows that the best way to support their long term growth is to impart the tools of learning and reasoning, not transcribing and memorising.

The teacher should be able to lay down a path to the student and say, If you follow down this road you will surpass me someday, and do so in a way where the student truly believes it is possible and is excited by it.

My most satisfying moments as a tutor are when I reach the end of a teaching block and look at the student I have been working with and realise that they have become powerful, independent learners, and that I finally have nothing left to teach them. Then I know my job is complete.

Tonight I was playing volleyball in the weekly social league and I pulled off a nice spike. It was one of those moments where time slows down a little and when you see the ball leave the setter’s hands you sigh a little at how perfect it is, and then you take your first step and it is a good, solid step, then you take your second step and it is also good, and then you bend your legs and explode up with both feet and you get up high, higher than usual, and suddenly your eyes are above the net and you see the whole court, with the opposing players, and right when the ball comes within firing range you engage your arms, shoulders and core and then wham, the ball flies down over the blockers and hits the floor with a resounding bang.

After I landed this spike time sped up again and I yelled Let’s gooooo, and my teammates yelled this too and we all came together to celebrate. But just as we went back to our positions one of my more experienced teammates came up to me, put his hands on my shoulders and whispered, Do it again.

I shuddered a little at this, partly because of his intensity but also because I knew he was right and I wasn’t sure if I could do it again, for a part of me knew it was a fluke and I didn’t want to have to do it again and risk being found out as a fraud. But then I remembered that a volleyball game has 25 points and there were many points to go, that in order to win we had to continuously perform at a high level, not just for one or two points, that while celebration for a nice point is well deserved, it must come with recognition that there are more hard points coming.

Anyone can hit a good spike once in a while. The difference between the average and the great comes from who can continuously do it, point after point, game after game.