the reason why i don't teach Romanian today ... well, one of them

i frequently complain about how this or that is not to my liking in the Romanian educational system. for as long as i can remember, i have always wanted to be a teacher. this makes me ask myself: is it the profession that chooses you or do you get to choose your profession? i haven't figured out the exact answer to this question. what i do know, is that now i am a link in this chainmail, if i can call it that, a member of the teaching profession, a teacher of foreign languages in an educational system, whose product and maker i am, to different extents, at the same time.

when i was little, with heart and soul i felt that i had to go to a class where the pupils whose mother tongue was Hungarian were taught. being a "mongrel" (i use this term in a loving way, referring to my bilingual roots), raised by my grandparents who were Hungarian, i wanted to go to the class that was taught in Hungarian. that was the choice of my heart back in the days. i still sometimes remember the crocodile tears i cried, locked in the bathroom the night before the first day of school, since my parents had decided that going to a Romanian class was the most suitable alternative for me. primary school was not bad. my colleagues were nice, the teacher was nice, life was ok. i started practising volleyball, we skipped the rope and played a lot of hide and seek. i soon forgot about the frustration of not having things go my way ... in the fifth grade, we started learning "more seriously" they said, it was time to learn responsibly, more than before. more teachers, more school subjects, colleagues coming and going, the first olympiads, they were all waiting to happen to all of us. 43 we were in a class and the competition was fierce. we were all proud to read, write, solve problems, make experiments, go on trips, even on the patriotic fruit-picking trips each autumn, as brave pioneers. our class tutor (diriginte) was the teacher of Romanian. she was pretty, and she was the best teacher in school, they said. "you should be proud she teaches you", they added. this woman had a warm smile and plenty of knowlegde. she dressed nicely, i can still remember admiring her shoes ... and she knew very well what to teach and require from us. she taught me how to read. she taught me how to be fair. she taught me that in life, hard work would bring satisfaction. but most importantly, she had faith in me. it was as if she knew me better than i knew myself. one day, when i was disappointed about something, when i felt like my wings had been cut off, she told me this: "my dear, people like you always succeed in doing everything they like. chin up". i was sad because i only got 9 out of 10 ...in a test. today, i think this is crazy, but back then, the one point that separated me from perfection made me think the world would collapse. i have told myself this many times since and i have her to thank for making me believe in people, as well as in being an inspiration to people. one day, i decided i wanted to be like her. i wanted to become a teacher of Romanian.

after the 8th grade was over, i took an examination and was admitted to a bilingual philology class in one of the highschools in the town where i grew up. i was delighted, philology was my cup of tea, learning languages was the best choice. i was looking forward to meeting the new Romanian teacher, i knew this person was going to be an important one in my life as a future teacher. in the first Romanian class, she asked us all what school we had studied in previously, the name of our former Romanian teacher and then asked us to be seated. she had blond hair, a sharp nose, bluish-green eyes and spoke Romanian in a funny way. little time had passed before i knew the nightmare had begun. she was cold, ignorant and played favourites. the doctor's son never got punished for not doing his homework, the judge's boy got away with pretty much every insolence, whereas the rest of us were insignificant meat in Madam Bad's kitchen. do not smile, Bad was her real name, but in Romanian it does not mean the same it does in English ... she was bad for me, that's for sure, because she soon made me forget about all the things the previous teacher had inspired me to dream, hope and want to accomplish professionally. such people should not be allowed to teach ! she came into, started reading the lessons from her notebook and we were supposed to write down as much as we could. i'm not going to mention her grading system, because it still makes me sick to the stomach. what i must add, however, is the fact that after four years of treating the "insignificant" ones badly, to which group i also unfortunately belonged, according to B, the graduation exam finally gave us, me, the chance to prove that she had misjudged us. i got a 10 in the oral exam and a 9.8 in the written exam in Romanian Language and Literature. she came to me when the exam was over and asked me about my grades. i told her what they were and at that moment, she smiled and hugged me, saying: "so, dear Andrea, if it hadn't been for my severe grading system, you would never have started to learn and achieve this". when i think about it, i would have preferred that moment to never have taken place on my emotional map, even though i dislike spiders, a black widow crawling up my face would have been like a warm summer breeze, comparing to the cold deadly chill i felt when she gracefully acknowledged her important contribution to my professional development.

i did become a teacher. but not of Romanian. was it because of the system? was it because i didn't want to be a Romanian teacher strongly enough? was it because of Madam Bad? i don't know. perhaps the subject is not so relevant. perhaps it is the desire to inspire others. perhaps it is a weakness. who can say? what i can say is that people matter, they influence you in ways you cannot begin to understand until you realise they left their mark on your personality, on your life, on your choices and sometimes on your dreams ...