A Series: Lessons I Learned Teaching in My 20s.

It’s NEVER about who you were.

We have been conditioned to follow a certain path in life: school → university → job → family. And when/if we don’t follow that path, it’s seen as a sign of failure by both us and those around us.

I teach at a diploma-level college, so students from all ages and backgrounds come across my path. Students who have been in education for years but struggled to graduate and ended up here because pursuing a diploma is “easier” than a bachelor’s. Adults who never continued their education and are full-blown professionals but decided to go back to academia and earn a degree.
People who paused university because they were going through a tragedy but have now recovered and decided to continue. People who didn’t have a choice to begin with but now have one, and they chose to study.

I have had the blessing of connecting with people who have come from the most diverse paths and have lived a million stories within stories. From them, I learned so much about the beauty of starting over.

From contemplating their stories, I always end up with the same simple, yet astounding conclusion: it’s never about a person’s past. I have had the pleasure of witnessing firsthand people unshackling themselves from the past and living in the phase of becoming who they want to be, and it was and is so glorious to see.

It does not matter who you were and what you did if you’re becoming someone else.

What’s heart-wrenching to witness is the resistance they receive from those who have hoods on their brains put on by societal stigma and false conditioning. There’s so much goodness and bravery in starting over and reattempting life, especially if it’s on your own terms now, and there’s nothing I despise more than holding someone’s past against them.

One of the hardest feelings to endure is shame. To use a person’s past against them is to make them feel ashamed for things that no longer align with who they are today. It’s unnecessarily and unfairly tormenting them, and possibly pushing them back into becoming the older versions of themselves that they worked so hard to evolve from. What disgusts me more is those who do it under the guise of “worry” or “caution,” when honestly it almost always comes from pure judgment.

I see this in education consistently (and in life in general). Students with a “bad” record, whether behavioral or academic, are usually scrutinized and treated differently than those with a “clean” record.

I don’t care that you got kicked out of three universities for failing.
I don’t care if you were an addict.
I don’t care if you were expelled for behavioral misconduct last semester.
I don’t care if you took a class with me and failed by absences.
I don’t care if you posted a video on social media that you regret.
I don’t care if you went to jail.

I don’t care who you used to be.

I don’t care if you made mistakes, regardless of what they are. If you are here now in front of me choosing to become a better person, it does not matter what you did. What you did in the past does not make you less of a person.
What you decide to do now is what defines you.

Basically: if it’s in the past, it’s in the past. If it no longer exists, you shouldn’t bring it back into existence. Instead, support the better versions people are trying to become.

I care about who you are now and who you want to become.