The Story of Giving Up Tutoring

In student life, others would find time alongside their regular studies to do tutoring, while I would find time alongside tutoring to study when I could. I had my own coaching center—Paul’s Coaching Home. I taught from class nine all the way to honors level. From morning to night, nonstop. I had to talk constantly! I never attended that many classes at CUET. I loved teaching with an impossible passion. I tried to give the absolute best of what I knew. I was incredibly dedicated to teaching. The amount of effort I put in—staying up night after night, sleeping little, creating difficult notes and lecture sheets for my students—when I think about it now, I’m amazed. I truly cannot remember what magic allowed me to work with such inhuman intensity back then! Every Friday morning I would teach Bengali literature, and in the afternoon I would hold classes for IBA BBA admission preparation. I would prepare top-level grammatical exercises and vocabulary sheets and have my students solve them. For intermediate science students, I would solve at least 3-4 books to help them get into engineering and medical colleges. (I was very professional, but none of my students could say I ever taught commercially.) Back then it felt like all those mesmerized eyes were looking at me in class, my students were achieving such good results, studying at the country’s top institutions—this was the most joyful thing in the world. One could spend an entire life in this single happiness. Life was right here! Who could be happier than me?

2002-2011. A long time. To write about it would require many words. (Perhaps someday when I have time, I’ll write it all out, we’ll see.) How I “wasted” that golden time of youth—which should have been spent in idle conversation—reading and teaching instead, I still feel regret when I think about it. That any normal person could work so hard purely for joy, even now I can’t quite believe it when the thought comes to mind. I taught students after studying extensively myself. I must have read their syllabus books hundreds of times over. The way I taught to strengthen their basics was practically torture for them. I held countless extra classes. I charged nearly double what other coaching centers charged. (If they didn’t study properly, I would scold them severely, even hit them with a stick. Every month I would expel some inattentive students from the coaching center for one offense or another.) I taught all subjects myself. Only for intermediate biology and commerce subjects were there two other teachers. I don’t know if there’s any other record of someone building up a coaching center entirely through solo effort. The boundless life force I had then—I cannot even imagine it now. I would challenge myself, saying that what I teach should be impossible to teach any better. I know this thinking was pure madness. But at that time I believed I gave the best teaching in the world. That belief helped me give my absolute best. I could work like a demon during that period. (My income was far, far more than any boy my age. I stayed so busy there wasn’t even time to go astray. Our family was quite well-off. Still, I did all this for joy. I taught many students for free. Most of them were poor, some were the type who would cheat me out of money.)

I don’t know how much you can sense my madness for teaching. I know it’s a bit difficult to imagine without being in my place. I wasn’t conscious in the slightest about my caliber or career. I’ve always been in the camp of doing what feels good to do. I found all the happiness in the world together in teaching. Yet I stepped away from there. How? Through a few incidents. I’m sharing two of them.

Every year many of my students would call to tell me they’d gotten into various prestigious institutions. However happy their parents were, my happiness was no less. One of my very favorite students had gotten into BUET Electrical. I was very fond of him for his modest behavior. He didn’t tell me he’d gotten in. When I found out much later and called to congratulate him, I asked, “I’m incredibly happy to learn you got into BUET. I bless you to go very far. You worked so hard. Brother, why didn’t you tell me this happy news? Come to the coaching center, I’ll treat you to sweets.” His reply was: “Sir, I was very busy, so it wasn’t on my mind. You should have called to ask me whether I got in or not. If we get more admissions, it’s your benefit, your coaching center’s good name. You’ll get even more students next time. And sir, I’m a bit busy now, the admission coaching centers are pulling at me from all sides. You understand, of course. I’ll come visit when I have time, sir.” I felt as if someone had given me a tremendous slap across the face. Tears began falling from my eyes. That day I said nothing to him, but internally a stubbornness settled in.

Let me share another thing. My students’ guardians would say among themselves that Sushanto Sir must be running a coaching center because he can’t do anything else. He’ll probably quit engineering studies too. He’ll spend his whole life just teaching students. If he could do something good, he wouldn’t be teaching students. Some behaved as if: we’re paying money, so the sir is obligated to teach. (I sometimes think now: many currently acclaimed brilliant students with double golden A-plus grades can’t even get on the waiting list for entrance exams at institutions where I came second in the entrance exam. Oh! And they’re the ones acting proud!)

Most of what I’ve achieved in life came from receiving tremendous blows. At one point I began to think: what does tutoring actually give us? One: raw money. Two: if very fortunate, respect and gratitude. Three: as a side effect of students’ good results, your own bad results. Four: foolish self-satisfaction… and nothing else. I don’t know if any of you have taught even one percent of the students I’ve taught in my life. Before starting my own coaching center, I taught at thirteen different coaching centers, including admission coaching. I know very well how others view tutoring during student life, what people think about it. I never took money from that favorite student of mine. His father wasn’t alive, so I had a soft corner for him. I myself called his mother and almost forced her through requests to agree not to pay me fees. The teacher’s fee he gave me for teaching him free—very few of my students managed to give me that much. That very student teaches me about earning money! But honestly, now I love him dearly for his rudeness that day. I needed that slap. I’m also grateful to my students’ guardians. The most prideful and joyful thing in this world is to do what ten other people think you cannot do. They thought and said I couldn’t do anything. Without saying anything, I showed through action that I too can achieve something. What better response could there be than achievement itself? For unknowingly throwing this challenge at me, I remember them with reverence.

One more thing: the easiest way to quit tutoring is to actually quit tutoring. Trying to quit tutoring for several years is like trying to quit cigarettes many times over. The easiest technique for how to start any work or how to stop doing work you’ve been doing for a long time—I’ll explain with a dialogue from my very favorite movie ‘The Good, the Bad and the Ugly’: When you have to shoot…Shoot! Don’t talk.