Professor Shehzad tightened his tie for the hundredth time. His knees wobbled, his heart raced like a sports car and sweat trickled down his forehead. Today was his first day as a physics teacher for grade 10. Physics! To teenagers!

He stared at his chalk-stained notes and muttered, “How did I get here?” Then came a flashback… back to his school days. He remembered it all too well.

Back then, he had been the ultimate mischief-maker. He doodled rockets and cars in every notebook, drew a moustache on the headmaster’s photo hanging in the hall, made his friend do the roll call when he was absent, came late just for fun and made weird animal noises to disrupt lessons. And that was just the beginning.

During chemistry experiments, he tried out more than he was supposed to. Once he even mixed sodium and rubidium in water! The popping and fizzing sounds sent half the students running out of the lab.

Teachers had called him a “trouble magnet”, and now here he was — a teacher himself.

The classroom door swung open. A whirlwind of teenage energy hit him. Paper planes flew, chairs squeaked and students chattered endlessly. Shehzad’s knees nearly buckled.

“I… I’ve got this,” he muttered, taking a deep breath. “Good morning, class!” he announced, his voice squeaky at first.

The students snickered.

“I’m your new physics teacher,” he said as the students exchanged grins. “We won’t do anything heavy or boring in our first class. Instead, we’ll start with atoms — the tiny building blocks of the universe! But let me warn you, misbehaviour in my class will have consequences!”

Some students froze. “Perfect,” Shehzad thought. “Authority established.”

He wrote ‘Atoms’ on the board. Snap! The chalk broke. The class erupted in laughter.

“Ah,” he said, “a demonstration of atomic fragility. Even chalk can be delicate, like an atom!”

As he turned back to the board to write, a paper plane zoomed toward him. He caught it mid-air.

“Excellent demonstration of projectile motion! But in my class, trajectories aimed at the teacher are strictly forbidden!”

The students giggled, but stopped.

Then Shehzad grinned and added, “Remember, protons are positive, electrons are negative… so don’t be negative in life, stay positive!”

The whole class burst into laughter. Shehzad realised this was working. They were learning and having fun.

By mid-lesson, he noticed something surprising: he was actually enjoying himself. The students weren’t scared of him. They were engaged, laughing and even asking questions.

Some whispered, “He’s kinda cool!”

Shehzad smiled to himself and thought, “Exactly what I was aiming for.”

When the class ended, he gathered his notes, thinking about his own teachers. For the first time, he realised how cool they had been too. They had patience, cleverness and a way of making learning fun, even when he had been the worst troublemaker. His tie was slightly crooked, his heart still racing, but he was grinning.

Professor Shehzad had survived his first class and discovered that teaching could be the greatest adventure of all — as long as you could be both a friend and a teacher at the same time.

Published in Dawn, Young World, October 4th, 2025