When in doubt, improvise!

The summer was settling-in, a lot dryer than these days, and the graduation of the 8th grade was knocking at the doors. A mysterious silence was ruling the space that day and a soft wind was giving me the chills on its way from the widely opened windows to the sole and tiny cornered door of our class room.

Little faces that we were, trembling at the thought of the shortly upcoming high school admission exam, we simply stood there, soaked in stress, sipping every word right of his lips, nervously noting it down as yet one more, never enough, strategy to win our way to the next learning theater.

He was walking the class floor like never before, reviewing out loud the critical rules of grammar and literature, all the stuff he had been teaching us for those past four years. We were going to apply it all, out of his sight, for the first time with real impact, and he wanted to make sure his craft was complete, that we were going to do well. Not for him, but for us. He knew how important that milestone was for us, for it was going to make or break our growth process, the way the society had it set out at that time.

He couldn’t leave without giving it all, and all he gave.

The exam consisted of two parts – math and Romanian language. He asked our opinion on which one did we expect to do better. Most of us, including myself, credited math. He laughed copiously!

He knew better about the human nature, of how the math and panic wouldn’t go together and that, when it was going to set it – the panic that is, we were to look inside ourselves for ideas and feelings, and draw solutions upon each of us human, rather than on the abstract rules out of our hearts. There was how the language part was going to save our day.

This is to my Romanian language professor, a living token of leadership, a manifest of an outward mindset, giving us closure by yet another, his ultimate “trick” to solving impasse:

“When in doubt, improvise!” – Constantin POPOVICI