Teaching - A fulfilling lifelong career

As many of you would know, I am a person who is willing to share my knowledge with anyone, except for enemies which I have only very few. :P Anyway, I like sharing knowledge and during my school and university times, I alway help my classmates and fellow coursemates with questions even to a point where they score better than me, but what the heck, I think I turn out to be a better person overall since I have derived the intangible benefits of teaching and coaching.

I like to 'teach' and 'coach' because of the following points. Firstly, by teaching you actually revise your work. You revise what you have learnt and the more you help people with their questions, the more times you revise, which translate to deeper impressions of these theories inside your brain. How many times have you come across in your work or study where the impression of certain theories or facts are not clear enough and you have to keep on referencing back to the books. I do come across such situations but this I would say has cut down to comfortable level.

Secondly, when we teach, sometimes we may need to go back to our basics or foundation of our skill or domain knowledge. These are some basics that we could have neglected or even forgotten because we have taken it for granted since we have the domain knowledge or skill has been used by us for so long. Revisiting these foundations will help us to grow our foundations bigger and stronger, and as chinese have a saying, "A very tall building, its foundation will always start from the ground" So to grow, you need a very very strong foundation.

Third, the challenge of making something that is difficult to comprehend into something that can be easily understood by others takes tremendous understanding and skill which I love taking on. And the joy of seeing someone who can comprehend the difficult theory give u intangible benefits like joy and satisfaction of overcoming the challenge.

So teaching others does not mean you do not grow at all. In fact, you are stronger than the person you taught even though he or she has the knowledge and skill you imparted because you would strengthen your foundations and understanding.

So I encourage people to share your knowledge and skill. It is a good experience and you would realise that individuals have individual way of understanding, and these can help you to know a certain person better as well.

Cheers!