Tuesday, March 23, 2010

The ‘Walking Testosterone Of Intelligence’ Is Actually A Nice Guy

Thuto Mashegoana

So the first term of my university life is almost over and I must say that it has been interesting meeting fellow classmates and lecturers. There is one lecturer who stands out though. I will never forget the day he walked into class.

“I cannot over emphasise the need for you to acquire new knowledge quickly,” he explained the first day he walked into our classroom. I’m sure most journalism students remember these words from dark, broad shouldered, bald headed, intimidating looking and weird bearded Mr. Gideon Mumeson Tebid. Yep he is all those things in one!

Okay so there we were attending his first lecture and he walked in and stood in front of the obstreperous class with a look that said ‘you do not want to mess with me’. Ultimately the students got the message and settled down.

He proceeded to ask us to introduce ourselves. He then asked what we would like to be taught. One of the students said she would like to be taught in any way as long as the lecturer is wearing a smile on his face. Well Mr. Tebid was not smiling – so I guess this would be hard criteria to fulfill. His response was to explain that he could not walk around smiling about nothing - which actually makes sense because if he walked around smiling for absolutely no reason at all he would look stupid and not like the walking testosterone of intelligence that he is.

It was then time for some motivational speaking from the seemingly hard guy. He told us about how we can learn to become champion journalists which worked in inspiring everyone to become a walking testosterones or oestrogents of intelligence using the five simple steps - IRUIR [Impact, Repetition, Utilisation, Internalisation and Reinforcement]

Now most, if not all, students will agree with me when I say that beneath that big bad guy image he tries to portray Mr. Tebid is actually quite a nice guy. I think we are going to have pleasurable two years with him. As he would say “knowing how to learn fast is the key to personal rapid growth as a budding journalist in contemporary South Africa”.

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