The Professor I Learned to Appreciate

Some teachers impress you immediately.

Others take years.

Harun belonged to the second group for me.

In my first year at university, I did not really know him.

I am not even sure I had seen him.

In the second year, I started noticing him.

The hair.

The beard.

The old blue Polo.

The bicycle in his office.

The dog.

There was something unusual about him.

He did not look like the image of a university professor I had carried in my head.

He seemed more relaxed.

More individual.

More interesting.

I liked that.

Then the third year arrived.

And I had two courses left behind.

That changed my opinion rather quickly.

Students are very good at evaluating professors according to one simple metric:

Did I pass the course?

If the answer is yes, the professor is reasonable.

If the answer is no, suddenly there are serious concerns about the entire educational philosophy of the department.

I was no exception.

For a while, I did not have particularly warm feelings toward him.

Then came my final year.

I took his computer graphics course.

Something changed.

Maybe he changed.

More likely, I did.

By then I had spent enough years at university to understand that the best courses were not always the easiest ones.

I had also started paying more attention to the person teaching the course, not only to the grade waiting at the end of it.

His jokes were good.

The exams were interesting.

Even the questions had personality.

Most importantly, he felt close to the students.

There is a large difference between a professor who knows a subject and a professor who makes students feel comfortable approaching him.

University students remember that difference.

I remember one small incident from the year he was my academic advisor.

I went to see him during course registration.

I asked:

“Sir, can we also do my friend’s registration?”

He immediately said:

“Of course. Come on, let’s do it. Tell me your friend’s student number.”

That was not what I meant.

I tried to explain.

“Sir, I meant I can go and do it myself. Would you approve it afterward?”

His answer was simple.

“You won’t find an empty computer in the lab now. Come on, let’s do it here.”

It was a tiny gesture.

Nothing dramatic.

He probably forgot it five minutes later.

I did not.

That is the strange thing about teaching.

A professor may spend weeks preparing lectures and years developing expertise.

Students sometimes remember a completely different moment.

A door that was open.

A joke before an exam.

A few extra minutes after class.

A simple act of kindness during registration week.

Small things become evidence of character.

Looking back, I think university education is built from two different curricula.

The official curriculum is easy to see.

Algorithms.

Data structures.

Computer graphics.

Operating systems.

Mathematics.

Programming.

Exams.

Assignments.

Credits.

Then there is the unofficial curriculum.

How a knowledgeable person behaves.

How someone explains a difficult idea.

How authority can exist without unnecessary distance.

How curiosity looks when it survives for decades.

How a teacher treats a student who needs help.

Those lessons are not listed in the course catalog.

They may last longer than the course itself.

When I first saw Harun, I noticed the visible things.

The beard.

The car.

The bicycle.

The dog.

Later, I noticed the teacher.

That took longer.

Perhaps students often need time to understand their professors.

We arrive at university very focused on ourselves.

Our courses.

Our grades.

Our problems.

Our plans.

A professor can easily become part of that machinery.

The person who gives the exam.

The person who decides the grade.

The person standing between us and graduation.

Only later do we begin to see the person behind the role.

By my final year, I found myself thinking that I had wasted some of the earlier years by not understanding him better.

That feeling is probably common.

We often recognize the value of people near the moment we are about to leave them.

School works like that.

A city works like that.

Sometimes relationships work like that too.

Familiarity makes things invisible.

Departure makes them visible again.

There were also stories among students that he was a hacker.

I do not know how much truth there was in those stories.

They probably grew from small comments he made during lectures, mixed with the natural mythology students create around technically gifted professors.

Every computer engineering department needs a few legends.

Someone who supposedly knows every programming language.

Someone who can read machine code by looking at it.

Someone who once broke into a system nobody else could understand.

Whether these stories are true is almost beside the point.

They become part of university culture.

What mattered more to me was something less dramatic.

He made computer science feel like something a person could genuinely enjoy.

Not simply a profession.

Not simply a sequence of courses.

Something worth remaining curious about.

Years later, that seems more valuable than I understood at the time.

A good professor does not only transfer information.

Information can be found in books.

Now it can be found almost everywhere.

A good professor shows what it looks like to have a relationship with a subject.

To remain interested.

To ask questions.

To have a style.

To be a person while teaching.

I did not understand all of that in my first year.

Or my second.

Definitely not when I was worried about courses I had failed.

But university gives you several years to revise your opinions.

By the end, I had revised mine.

Sometimes the lesson takes longer than the course.