For me, it was an easy choice: students usually pay to learn, while I was getting paid to learn.

For people who were paying me to write, I was a sucker: I was doing their work, and they were getting all the credit. For me, the people who were paying me to write were suckers: I was getting paid for learning something they were paying $40,000 to learn.

So, I guess, it was an even trade: both parties thought that the other was a fool.

To me, a high school student at the time, it was the best job I could get: flexible working hours and unlike school I could choose the topics I wanted to write on! Via this job, I would get the benefits of a foreign education, learn what higher-education felt like in the first-world, experience how the assessments are and learn if I wrote well enough to pass a post-grad thesis while still being in high-school.

As a result, I contributed to my first PhD thesis at 21 and after that the job had kind of lost its charm. In short, writing papers above my academic level was a challenge, and I was up for it. After all, I had always aspired to be a polymath. And, this, brought me one step closer to that dream.

Apart from the above, and the meagre pay, helping students cheat was a silly act of rebellion as well. I had always noted that a teacher’s attention is non-uniformly distributed: it goes most where it is needed the least.

Ever since I was in primary school, I had noticed that the students who were the worst-performers (and in theory needed extra attention) never got enough of it. Contrastingly, the good students got the most attention from teachers. All this lead to was this: struggling students forever struggled. In a class, where everyone came to better themselves only a handful succeeded. And, to me, that was unjust.

My teenage self, held my teachers in silent contempt: why were all of the students paying the same tuition but not getting the same level of attention? Isn’t the teacher in charge of helping their students grow? If a student fails a test, isn’t it evidence that a teacher’s lesson wasn’t equally understood by all? Why then, does she blame the student but not herself? After all, doesn’t the test test her teaching skills as well?

This contempt, helped me partially justify the moral issues I had with ‘professionally’ helping students cheat: if teachers couldn’t do their job responsibly why should students? It was a silly act of rebellion against ‘bad teachers’ and an education system that didn’t really care about how it conducted its business: the system was beating them, and I was helping them beat the system.

These struggling students were usually ignored because they didn’t know how to explain what they didn’t understand, they didn’t ask for attention, came from a different socioeconomic background than the rest of the class and/or all of the above. After a few failed attempts, teachers would stop working with them and would just label them as ‘hopeless’ cases. Ignorance is bliss, but only when you’re not at the receiving end of it. From my perspective, it seemed some empathy with their condition would have helped them all achieve better results.

My ethical position on my academically challenged peers, was perhaps due to my own ‘biological’ failings as well. I was born with a speech impediment, and I had a severe stutter all through my school years. I likened (and still liken) some students not being able to write well, or understand well, as an impediment – and seeking immediate help for that as a symptom of suffering – and not an absence of morality.

At the time, for the above reason, it was easy for me to harbour empathy towards failing students. I had lived in their shoes – albeit a bit differently. I looked at my peers, and everyone else, as different ‘versions’ of me.

To give you better perspective into what I felt for them. I will attempt for you to understand what I felt for myself. Then, hopefully, you can connect the dots yourself – however you please.

We used to have English and Urdu classes at school. Once a week, during the 5th grade, we were supposed to ‘read out loud’ parts of a book or a magazine: those classes were the bane of my existence.

For the Urdu classes it was Wednesdays, where the teacher would ask every student in the class to standup and read out loud a part of a magazine to the whole class.

Wednesdays made me want to disappear from the face of Mother Earth. Every Tuesday night when I would go to bed, I prayed that when I woke up it would magically be Thursday – but sure enough it never was. God loves Wednesdays, apparently.

Every Wednesday morning while brushing my teeth to go to school, like the Titanic hit by an iceberg, my stomach would slowly start to sink against the glacial movement of the minute hand on our wall clock.

Every Wednesday morning, I would look at myself in the bathroom mirror brushing my teeth. Soon, my own visual would disappear in front of the mirror, as my brain would teleport my mind to relive all of my previous painful experiences.

I don’t know how long the flashbacks lasted, but each one left a painful dent in the present as it passed by – until my mind shuddered to a close and shut those flashbacks off.

Slowly the present moment would glaze in front of my eyes again, and I would see myself appear in front of the bathroom mirror with a mouthful of toothpaste foam. Like all weeks, as I spit out my toothpaste in front of the mirror – I prayed my turn wouldn’t come this week. The only thing that gave me hope to go to school, was perhaps I would get lucky and my turn wouldn’t come this week.

As we would drive to school, the harrowing feeling in my stomach started to grow – the nearer the school building came the worst I felt – what if my turn did come this week? I would stare at other people passing by through the car window, and be jealous of how nonchalant their Wednesdays were.

So happy they were, not dreading their own existence on a Wednesday.

Street hawkers selling fruit in the middle of the road, brushing flies away from their ware. Crows sitting on the side of the road, pecking away at whatever they found interesting on the ground. People walking away from dairy shops holding bread in their hands. Middle aged people sitting in tea stalls exchanging laughs over a cup of tea. Amidst all these casual happenings, one thing was clear: all of them were having a far much better day than me.

I remember particularly being jealous of the street kids, who in torn clothes, at 7:30AM in the morning were playfully bouncing tires with a stick with the broadest grin on their faces – so happy they were.

Meanwhile, I was driving to my weekly Wednesday suicide mission at the gallows of the privilege that was my education. Whenever I looked at those kids, I swore that one day I would be rich and pay to send them to school – so that they would suffer as much as me.

After wishing numerous times that we got into an accident on the way, which we never did unfortunately, I would inevitably reach school. After going through morning assembly, as soon as classes started, my eyes would be glued to the weekly timetable marked on the wall – focused on how close the Urdu class was to the current class.

As every period went by, I started to visually see the ‘periods’ away from embarrassment I was. Slowly but surely, the Urdu period arrived – and the Titanic in my stomach started to sink faster and faster.

I would stare at the classroom door, as it lay agape waiting for the teacher’s arrival. I stared. I waited. I hoped. I prayed. I wanted to tilt the universe into a reality in which she wouldn’t walk through the doors today – just today please.

The longer she didn’t appear, the more optimistic I became – wow – will we really skip this class today? Will this Wednesday be not like other Wednesdays? Will I not be forced to read today? Will I get to skip adding one more painful memory to my mental rolodex of shame? Will today be a good Wednesday?

My heart would fill with burgundy joy at the mere thought of her possibly not coming – she was a mere seconds late and I couldn’t contain my happiness. Immediately, I started to plan my celebration in case we skipped class today.

I would imagine myself running home, wildly taking off my shirt whilst running towards the living room of my house. Then, I would hold my shirt up, and just in my vest, trousers and socks, spin my school shirt in the air into a cocoon while jumping up and down with joy. I would then throw my shirt on the ground, and close my hands in a fist, spin them in circular fashion and would do happy sideways pelvic thrusts that would put a Bollywood actress to shame.

I knew exactly what I would do after that as well. I would run to my little brother, who would probably be sitting in front of the television shoving his face with the chips that he liked and I would pick him up and throw him up in the air. And squeeze and kiss him to transfer my happiness onto him, and then I would take his chips and keeping filling them in my mouth until he found it funny and started to laugh. Then, I would run to my mother and tell her that… Oh, no.

As soon as I could see her shadow appear on the wall behind the door – my heart sank to the bottom of the floor – she came today.

As soon as I saw her, the Titanic in my stomach sunk deeper into the shameful waters of my own existence. Today, again, I would have to face the horrible consequences of my own ineptitude.

Soon, she would stand in front of the class – giddy as always. She already had a copy of the magazine in her hand with her thumb bookmarking the article and page she wanted us to read.

She usually made us start reading from the top right of the room, and I was already anticipating her to take the name of my friend sitting there to start reading. Which, she did. Sure enough, like clockwork, he stood up like a soldier on the front-line, and started to read out loud after he found the correct page and article.

As soon as he started to read, I started to calculate how many seats down from him I was today – we often rotated seating positions. Given my seat position this week, I calculated that unless there was an earthquake or aliens invaded the planet – it was quite certain that I would be asked to stand up and read today.

For you see, each class was 45 minutes. Each student would usually read for at least three minutes. The good readers were made to read for 5 or 10 more minutes – which I guess was to be taken as a compliment.

I already knew who the good readers were, and only one of them was in the seats leading up to me. Hence, in a class of 24 with rows of 3 with 8 students in one row – since I was in the second desk in the second row – I would probably be asked to read towards the end of the class. Damn it.

In doing this anticipatory math in my head, I of course did not pay attention to what they were reading. And as soon as my blurry vision came back thinking of all the scenarios, half of the row had already done their reading. It was now Areeb’s turn who was the ‘good reader’.

I don’t know if Omar was a poet’s son or something, but the way he read Urdu was very movie star like. With glasses being held by the brim of his nose, which had sweat decorating it like dew drops, he started to read. His reading was always fluent, rhythmic and measured. Whenever he read, we all paid attention – he had a gift – it was majestic.

Today, I think, he has ‘grown up’ to be banker or something – a wonderful application of his gift for oration of course.

Nonetheless, one by one – my friends kept reading and the closer my turn got – the more I felt my body heating up. I would feel my forehead getting sweaty, and my armpit exuding heat. Soon enough, as my friend next to me started to read – I became fixated on the words on the magazine trying to find where he was reading since we were supposed to start where the other student had stopped.

As soon as my finger found where we was reading, every pause he made my heart skip a beat. I had already scanned the article, so most probably he was going to stop at the next full stop. I began to glance over at the scribbles after the next full stop to help me prepare. I saw the first word after the full stop and started to pronounce it in my head as preparation.

The closer he came to the full stop, the more I wanted to wear an invisibility cloak and disappear from everyone’s view. Sure enough, and soon enough, he stopped. I saw him sit down in my peripheral which was my cue to stand up. And now, dreadfully, it was my turn.

While others stood blazingly fast like soldiers ready to take up duty, I stood up like a politician enacting a new law: deliberately taking an unreasonable amount of time.

As soon as I begun to stand up, I could feel the nose of the Titanic in my stomach finally sink – and disappear underwater. Now, it was just cold eerie silence: in the room and in my stomach. The road to failure was over, and now was the time to actually fail – and that too in spectacular fashion.

Urdu magazines are oddly colorful with extremely tiny fonts. Their design resembles a lot with traditional ‘shalwar kameez’ colors which women wear. This is the thought I distracted myself with as I mustered courage to keep standing. As soon as I was on my feet, the silence in the classroom had become deafening.

I knew they were waiting for me to start reading, and within the silence I could feel that they were as uncomfortable as I was. Since, well, they knew as much as me what was about to happen: my friends were dreading my turn as much as I was.

I already had my finger stuck on the word, and I knew if I was able to read the first word fluently – the rest would follow a bit more easily. I don’t know how many seconds had passed by, but within the silence I felt the pressure to start reading build up. As everything around me started to blur, I started to read.

The first word was ‘aasman’ (clouds), and I opened my mouth to pronounce the first ‘a’ sound. Since the word has an elongated ‘a’ sound, when I started to stretch it my jaw got locked and I felt my throat starting to put my tonsils in a choke-hold: not a good start.

I tried to break the choke-hold by pushing the ‘a’ sound even harder – and the harder I pushed the tighter the guillotine tightened around my neck. I pushed harder, and it felt like the nerves in my neck were turning into Devil’s Snare: hell bent on choking me to death.

When my throat had choked, I could feel my vision blurring and my lungs started to tighten as I was trying to force out after the elongated ‘a’. Soon, my eye balls would have rolled over or my eyes started to flutter – I couldn’t even see the page.

I was now locked in a battle between myself, my mind, and my body. All of each were tangentially doing different things.

Completely oblivious to the predicament, my mind was in a complete independent spiral. It was blaming me for even coming to class. There was almost a tornado of negative questions it was asking me, such as: why did you even come? Couldn’t you have made an excuse? You could have traded seats with a friend to go to the end of the classroom. What made you want to do this? Etc etc.

My body meanwhile was not oblivious to the situation. It had begun to lock up harder and faster than an automated bank vault during a heist: it had detected something was wrong and was locking everything to keep itself safe. And as a result, was not aware of the collateral damage being caused in the process.

In between those two, there was me. Trying not even to negotiate between the two, and letting them both stretch themselves to their heart’s content in any direction they pleased.

On the one hand, my mind was screaming and cursing at me for putting myself through this again and on the other hand my body was being beat down. I was a child, and they were like two parents fighting in front of me: the effects of them fighting would dawn on me much much later.

Slowly, and I don’t even know why – my mind let go and my eyes opened. I could see the page again, and, what had happened in the meanwhile was that I was stuck in a loop and repeating the ‘a’ sound over and over.

After what felt like an eternity, I don’t know how, I came out of the loop and my mouth started to be less agape though my jaws had started to hurt. If you asked me how many times I had repeated the ‘a’ sound I wouldn’t be able to tell you. I do know that my volume gradually lowered with almost every repetition – until the last time I repeated the ‘a’ sound was barely audible (even to me).

Meanwhile, the room was still silent – and for what God knows how long – I had barely gotten through the half of the first syllable and not even completed the first word! Now, let’s get to the second syllable.

The second sound was the ’s’ sound – but the sound is part of the first syllable so that is how it is meant to be pronounced. I probably skipped that, and at that time I could feel weird scratching sensations in my head within the brain.

I could feel elastic bands pulling it apart, and felt like a cat was scratching the front of my head. Nonetheless, I tried to finish the word by pushing the second syllable ‘smaan’ and was able to do quicker – though my lungs were still hurting and the ‘m’ sound had my throat ease a little.

I started to imagine myself from a third person perspective, and it was a weird out of body experience: I saw myself looking extremely foolish with my belt tightening my pants to the 10th extra buckle my mom had poked in my belt for me. I also saw myself with my face red as a tomato, in a weird uniform standing in front of the class having a very public verbal constipation. I don’t know if my face was actually red though.

This entire time, the room was silent – since we were all friends – nobody laughed or snickered: there was none of that. Ever.

Now bear this in mind, what I’ve explained above, is not even one word of one reading session of one class for one year. This is just the Urdu class – which I remember very clearly since they were scheduled to be once a week. There were the English classes as well – in those there wasn’t a fixed day – and other classes where we had to do presentations or were expected to speak publicly.

Hence, when I was in school, and whenever there was a public presentation to be made I would obviously dread it and would get cold feet. Often, I would wish that someone else would do it for me – because I hated having to embarrass myself on purpose like that.

While ‘public speaking’ is the world’s number one fear, trust me when I say that that ‘fear’ when coupled with the impediment of stuttering is a ‘hulk’ sized version of itself.

Drop a quarter of a glass of juice in plain water, and observe how that tiny pool of juice visibly ‘infects’ itself onto the plain water. Very quickly, the juice dispels itself on to its host and changes its host completely into its own form. That is how it feels like, when the worst part in you takes over you – for me it was my stutter. For other people, it might be something else was my understanding.

The debilitation saturated my mind, body and overtime warped my sense of self. The embarrassment of having a throat-choking stutter repeatedly within a span of 2 seconds, and having no means to control it, was just too difficult to emotionally bear at times.

Uncontrollably repeating syllables, getting stuck with a gaping mouth struggling for air mid-sentence, and having rapid eye movement to the point of blindness are not comfortable experience to have when a lot of people are looking at you. Especially so, when the people who you are speaking in front will loom around you for the rest of the day, month and probably the ensuing years well until your adult life.

As you can imagine, none of it was fun for me. But I still had to do it. As you can further imagine, since from a very early age I have had some expectations from education for myself and my peers – and I have seen them not being delivered as dutifully as we were expected to be attending classes.

What was painful to me, was that even though I went to the same school for nearly a decade – I never got the attention in the area I should have received. My problem was known, not just to my peers but to my teachers as well. I was expecting them to do something. No help ever came.

They were adults after all, here they were standing in front of the blackboard telling us things – surely they will notice and find something for me. But somehow, my problem was treated like harmless dirt on the floor and pushed underneath the rug – hoping no one would notice.

Or maybe, since helping me wasn’t part of the ‘syllabus’ or something I wouldn’t be tested on in exams – it was deemed unimportant.

The theory was that, perhaps, if I was made to do this ‘enough times’ – it would just ‘disappear’. But it didn’t disappear, and eventually for a multitude of reasons I started to hate the classroom experience.

When I finished my schooling – I was relieved to the nth degree. I never wanted to set foot in a classroom ever again. Never, ever again. Never, ever, ever again.

There would be no more of these Wednesday’s, no more of this torture ever again: never ever again.

Despite whatever promises going to a university might hold, I never wanted to go through that torture again. Hence, whatever silly university ‘entrance exams’ I gave I flunked on purpose – I would replay the trauma I had to endure for the past decade or so and had no intention of going through that again.

The trauma of my schooling years left a terrible dent on my self-identity. Not only did I feel was not normal, I KNEW I was not normal. Hence, did not deserve ‘normal’ things.

Speaking is such an integral part of societal relationships – that I’m amazed how for granted its taken. If I couldn’t speak, how could I function in society? Surely, I am an inferior person – and as a result should have less, do less and be less.

Think about it, do you have any idea of the freedom you have as a normal speaker? The things you do blasé, which people like me find me amazingly marvelous?

Your routine, was my luxury. Menial task such as ordering you favorite meal from the restaurant is something that was a luxury for me. Whenever I ordered food, I did not order the item that I liked I ordered the item whose name I could say fluently. Often, I couldn’t find such a name – and would just say ‘one more of that’ and ‘two of those please’ after someone else had ordered. Other times, I would just let someone else order for me – some people just pride themselves at ordering food for other people – and I was perhaps the only person on Earth who genuinely appreciated these people.

Talking on the phone, or ringing the bell and saying my name when somebody asked ‘who is it?’ – scared me more than any horror movie ever could. Sometimes, most difficult thing for me to pronounce was my own name – how sad is that?

So, sometimes, I would just avoid meeting new people and going to events – since who wants to make a horrible first impression by not being able to pronounce their own name?

What is hilarious that when I would think about marriage – I wouldn’t think of having a family, meeting the perfect person or starting a new life. I was foreseeing the moment I would have to say ‘I do’ in front of my family and friends – and stuttering in between: what a horrible climax to an anti-climatic wedding right? Will I not ruin the event for the bride as well?

Things were looking bleak for me, life was pretty weird – I had no hope for myself. If elementary activities like going to the grocery store were so painful, how could I function as an individual with actual responsibilities?

A peer of mine at the same school, suffered with stuttering as well. Both of us, would often discuss how bad speaking in front of people was – and how it was worth not coming to school on some days.

Both of us, would repeatedly discuss ways of avoiding speaking engagements. How both of us wished, our lives were different, and that we were better at speaking. But, alas, we were dealt the cards we’d been dealt.

We were one-legged people competing in a two-legged person race. Facing that competition and watching ourselves struggle to achieve something that came naturally to other people was tormenting.

Often, I would wish that someone else would read or speak for me – were there an opportunity for me to pay someone to take my place maybe I would have paid them. Mainly because the cost of hiring them would dwarf the future ‘cost’ of embarrassment.

And, I, like most humans, wanted to avoid unbearable pain at a bearable cost. But, of course, since I was required to speak in person sending a ‘proxy’ was obviously impossible.

Hence, when I looked at students who were struggling academically I connected it with the same struggle I had while speaking. I knew, how much it would mean to me if someone else had offered a shoulder to me to lean on while competing against normal ‘two-legged’ people. How much it would mean to me, if I could somehow be ‘normal’ like the others. With this in mind, whenever struggling peers came to me for academic help, I helped them – in anyway I could.

My understanding was simple, some things occurred to them naturally which didn’t occur to me naturally. I couldn’t speak like them, and they couldn’t write like me. I thought of it as just sharing what I had, nothing else.

I saw all of the other students as different shapes and forms of me – and had different struggles but struggles nonetheless. Some got math slowly, some were bad at English, some couldn’t memorize things easily, some had trouble painting, some hated sports, some were shy, some had grey hair as early as in the 5th grade: we were all broken shards that perhaps came together to form quite a unique bunch.

The recollection of those experiences, is why this particular problem is near and dear to me. I had seen their pain, and the self-doubt this experience brought on them. It was something I connected with at a human level.

Most students who were not ‘academically inclined’ quite easily confided and uttered phrases like ‘I’m not smart’, ‘I know I’m stupid, which is why I have to do this’ or similar ideas to the same effect – all of these are heart-breaking things to hear from a peer.

It often made me wonder, is this why my parents are sending me to school? Is this why all of us are coming here, to have our flaws laid bare and have absolutely nothing done about it? Moreover, hanging our weaknesses over in front of our friends for full display – as if they were magnificent paintings meant to be marveled at for their ugliness?

We are all pushed out of our comfort zones at some point in our lives. Nobody is the best at everything they pursue, and it is hurtful to be labelled in your entirety when you’re out of your comfort zone to begin with.

To me, coming to school was the bravest thing these students did all day. If you were a one-legged person running in a two-legged person race, would you show up to the track everyday? They knew they would loose horribly, but they still had the courage to show up. If that’s not bravery, I don’t know what is.

It seemed the whole ‘education’ process was just designed to fit around the needs for a few who were already naturally inclined at the needs they were being assessed on. The process just made the few better at what they were already better at, and worse or make no improvements in areas they actually needed help on: social Darwinism at it’s finest.

Students who were good at math, kept getting better at math and kept sucking at volleyball. Students who were good at volleyball, kept getting better at volleyball and kept sucking at math. I was good at writing, kept getting better at writing and kept sucking at reading and speaking.

The pattern was obvious: this wasn’t just happening to me – it was happening to everyone. It felt like the system didn’t exist for us, but we existed for the system.

With this in mind, as a primary school student, whenever my classmates came to me for help, I helped them. So, helping people academically was sort of second nature to me by the time I was a ‘professional’ ghostwriter.

The help I gave my classmates took various forms: going over topics with them again, revisiting old homework, and some of that help included letting them copy from my work as well. Every year, the ‘weakest’ student in my class would be my best friend for the year.

During primary school, helping my academically challenged peers was a spiritually rewarding experience. It was satisfying to see the smile on their faces when they finally understood something they had till yet failed to understand: watching their expressions change as magical gears clicked together in their head to expose a new reality in front of their eyes.

Come to think of it, how intuitive is Pythagorus Theorem anyway? Not very. The first time all of us have seen a triangle is in a school textbook, and not in the real world. Therefore, how intuitive is understanding it anyway? Not very.

With a little bit of help, they came in walking with shame, and left with strides of confidence: they had suddenly conquered the thing that had forever been debilitating them. And that, to me, was success. That, to me, was the purpose of education.

Most importantly, perhaps, they left feeling normal. I thought everyone in my class deserved that. If not from my teachers, then from me. If I didn’t feel normal, it gave me happiness seeing somebody else did. As a ‘professional’ I only had to let them copy from my work, so it was easier than teaching my peers which I had done during my 2-12 years of schooling.

But, all in all, my point is that we’re all handicapped. I had a different one, and some other people might have different ones. For some odd reason, it seems that no one else seems to be aware of this fact.

Our flaws, are perhaps the beauty of our existence. They force us to think beyond our selves, and find other people to make a better whole in commercial, spiritual, romantic and educational engagements.

Our flaws are perhaps the reason markets, companies and institutions (including marriage) exist: to form a somewhat complete union from disparately flawed individuals.

I was quite lucky in the sense that my flaw was very obvious. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t deny it. Other people aren’t that lucky. While most people would feel bad for me, I felt bad for them. At least I knew what I have to improve, most people spend their whole lives running from their flaws or completely oblivious to them – how can you improve something you can’t even acknowledge exists? That, is the truly depressing situation.

After years of accepting that I was not normal, and would not be able to produce anything I had in my mind – and make it last. In those years, being a proxy author was perhaps quite comfortable in that sense as well – it represented all I could be to me: a background daemon helping others get whatever it was they wanted from their life.

One final day, I remember that I got tired of it. I don’t know what pushed me over the edge, I wish I did – it was perhaps the repetitive nature of it was being too repetitive for me to want to repeat again.

I was not tired of the fact that I made embarrassingly crooked faces when I stuttered. I was not tired of seeing the faces people made when they were trying to understand what I was saying. I was not tired of the fact that I lost control when I was stuck in a stuttering loop. I was not tired of the fact, that when I saw the telephone ringing I intentionally would never want to pick it up. I was not tired of the fact that when someone asked my name, I couldn’t say it. I was not tired I couldn’t ask for directions when I was lost. I was not tired of never being able to order the food I wanted. And, I was not tired of using ‘hacks’ stutterers use – like switching words in between sentences.

What I was tired of was, scheduling my whole life around it – my stutter was my master and I was its slave. My whole life was spent dodging those moments. My life was like a golf ball, and my stutter was the golfer. Every time I planned around my stutter it would nudge the ball forward in any direction that seemed most comfortable: small tiny movements in the direction that kept me the most safe in the current moment.

What had suddenly dawned on me, was that with such a horrible golfer the golf ball would never ever meet the fairway. With every stroke, not only was I further and further behind par – I was so deep in the rough that I had forgotten that there is a hole in the ground where the golf ball is intended to be buried.

Hence, so far, it seemed like the only purpose of my life seemed to be to just avoid speaking engagements until I met the eventual fate of death. And with that, my weary self turned into a teary self. And, I did something I didn’t even do when my father passed away: I cried.

After succumbing to tears, I realized that accepting reality was not an option anymore. Nor was feeling sorry for myself. The only option then, was to redefine what reality was. And to fight the only person who was in my way: me.

What helped me get better in my situation, was taking a long break from the education ‘system’. The system was so blinded by the automata of it itself, that perhaps never truly noticed that what would help me increase my quality of life was not practicing more math problems – but perhaps improving in an area that was eating away at my foundations like a termite.

In accepting that, I started to throw away everything and prioritized my speech over everything else.

What really helped me, was purposely unplugging from the ‘system’ of school , and then university and then whatever, and the general direction society pushes normal young adults into the rat race. What really helped me, was putting everything aside and focus on my speech related issues as if it were my full-time job.

From thereon I started a journey which lasted a long grueling 8 months, in which I changed many speech therapists, and finally found one who nurtured me quite close to normality. I also did various experiments and made a small data model to help me with my stuttering. Sometimes, I did go to extreme lengths like submerging my head in a bucket of water multiple times a day to get better at breath control. But, the key thing is – I improved.

I improved enough, that although I still can’t be considered a ‘normal’ speaker, although I would never want to be ‘normal’ now too – since I feel this impediment keeps me humble and grounded in my own humanity. While it was a curse, I would never have the power to think beyond myself without it.

Nonetheless, after focusing on my own problems to the extent of at least having more control over them was like having a new lease of life and getting a new second life in which I was in more control: a life I never would have imagined was possible for me to live in!

And, the main thing is after years of feeling dismayed and futile, I felt happy and empowered! Suddenly, I could access layers of my own life that weren’t accessible before. That is all I ever wanted to feel after being educated: empowered. Sadly, that experience never came with traditional schooling – at least for me.

The thing is, in matters of the body mankind has advanced quite a bit, since those are apparent in bodies. In matters of the mind, mankind is still living in prehistoric times, since those are obscured by behaviour.

There are students who do struggle with writing, learning, and connecting thoughts with symbology which is words and sentences – and in a weird variety of ways which might take further decades to understand. I’ve seen it in my friends, and I’ve seen it broken emails sent by students. I don’t think we can claim we know everything there is to know about learning deficiencies – just yet -therefore the doors to discovery are quite open. And, there, a tremendous amount of progress needs to be made.

Imagine for a bit that we lived in the 11th century, when and where nearsightedness or farsightedness weren’t clearly understood – therefore glasses didn’t exist. How would a child who is not able to see even express his lack of vision? How would they even know, that their vision is not normal? More so, what would he do to help himself in class? Surely, he would just ask a friend to read the blackboard to them – and if that were his reason to not do his work – wouldn’t the teacher just say that the student is making excuses?

That is the current state we are in this predicament. For some (yet unquantifiable) students, asking others to do it is the only option they have – in order to maintain themselves in the system via a “proxy”.

Like visually impaired people, perhaps these students do not need somebody hanging by their side reading for them. Like visually impaired people, they need glasses. And perhaps my efforts have been horribly misguided in all these years, since nothing I was doing was actually a sustainable solution for them. Perhaps, a more sustainable solution would be to build a tool or a learning/writing therapy mechanism – such that spent more time understanding the person than delivering the message.

Nevertheless, I feel the need to mention that my misgivings are not targetted at individuals – I have had phenomenal teachers at school. If I do anything useful in life ever, they deserve all the credit.

To name just a few, there was Ms. Rana who was spectacular in teaching science and would sometimes mouth answers to us to nudge us towards the correct answer in our final exam, Ms. Swaleha our math teacher who came to teach come hail or high water (I think she came to teach more than there are days in a year), Sir. Ilyas who was unnecessarily strict because ofcourse you have to be if you teach religon, Ms. Fatima who was such a good teacher that she got the principal’s job within 6 months after teaching – we missed her a lot when she took the promotion, Mr. Abdul Hammed who taught us Urdu and would take unbelievable tangents during lectures all of which would have the same ending: that he used to the speech writer for the prime minister (we doubt it, sir), Ms. Rubina who taught math in 10th grade and would always make herself laugh when she would pretend to be strict – never would have understood calculus without her. And, then, finally Sir Moin who gave me the best advice I never took: I should have opted to study the sciences and not business.

Therefore, please don’t misunderstand my frustrations against the system as frustrations against the individuals – all of them were merely doing their job. What I have always questioned, perhaps, is what the job is that they should merely be doing?

As I got much older, I realised these teachers weren’t bad people. It was because my teenage self had a luxury those adult teachers never had: free time. The ‘enemy’ wasn’t perhaps ‘bad’ teachers, it was time. Idle extra-time is a luxury teachers can’t afford, but is used as a form of punishment for students (detention). Funny how life changes as we age: what was once served punishment is later deemed a luxury.

Teachers, never have the free-time to explore a student enough to diagnose their weaknesses, strengths, personality traits and nuances. As a student and peer, I felt I knew their personal nuances better than our teacher – in large part because I had spent more time with them.

The importance of understanding individual nuances can’t be ignored – since during those years I also noticed that students who had personal tutors generally outperformed students who did not. I do have a sense, that tutors are able to pace a student as per their nuances and hence train students who can outperform.

This opened another pandora’s box: if tutors are the main teachers why must we go to classrooms and duplicate effort? Moreover, will students who can’t afford private tutors always end up at the bottom of the barrel? In effect, then, perhaps the tutoring industry is created as a spillover effect of failures in delivery in mass education? Therefore, the tutoring industry is a leading indicator of an economy’s growing future income disparity and class struggles?

Historically, perhaps, learning has always been a master/student relationship. And, perhaps, in the trade-off to standardization, consumerism and modernity we’ve lost that sacred essence of the transfer of knowledge. There is something inherently divine about the transfer of hope, knowledge, questions, deliberation, excellence and enlightenment from one generation to the next.

What provides an interesting juxtaposition to the modern classroom, is going through an experience where such antiquity is not only preserved but celebrated. And, that I found in the culture in which the Eastern traditional music of Qawwali is transmitted across generations.

For context, this is a culture that considers writing a heretical practice. They believe that matters of the heart deserve only to be committed to the heart itself. Since they primarily engage with poetry, it is heartwarming to hear this from someone in the 21st century—not only do they recite poetry, but their very way of recording it is poetic: they inscribe it in the emblems of their heart.

Nonetheless, in such cultures, the acquisition of knowledge is considered a lifestyle: there is no timetable or schedule. Oft the student and teacher would share the same living space. In spirit, the bond between student and teacher is considered eternal.

The interesting part about this sub-culture is that there is no degree or certification at the end, there is only one reward: excellence. Learning is understood as its own purpose, and practicing a skill considered a devotional act.

Learning is suffering in agony in yearn for the truth. For in the yearn for the truth, you do not learn more about the observed – but more about yourself as well. Their practice, as I’m given to understand, is derived from the Tariqa (The Way) order of Sufism.

Nonetheless, together, as student and teacher, their goal is to take a journey towards self-betterment and self-actualization. But I think these bonds are not constricted to Qawwali only; Aristotle and Alexandar, Rumi and Shams, Daniel LaRusso and Mr. Miyagi all are popular examples of such bonds and relationships.

And, perhaps, all the education sector really is trying to do is to systemize the creation and replication of these bonds between people: the bond between the knowledge-holder and the knowledge-seeker.

Coming back to today though, teachers never have the free time to explore a student enough to diagnose their weaknesses, strengths, personality traits and nuances. It is important for these nuances to be understood, for these nuances are the centre of our individuality – one who cannot be understood fully, can never be taught fully. But, more on that later.

Truth of the matter is, life is a complex optimization problem of managing time, energy and resources. And we’re not there, but we’ll get there.

As I’ve gotten older, I have obviously come to realize that teaching in the modern day is a thankless and a ridiculously underpaid job – sometimes it feels like a miracle that what is being achieved is achieved!

The situation, infact, is so dire, that if professions were countries, teachers and teaching would quite definitely be a third-world country: a country from which at some point in time we all have taken something from, but never bothered to give anything back.

Nonetheless, this is my telling of why some students pay writers to do their coursework for them: they are avoiding unbearable pain at a bearable cost. There might be various other motivations as well, which I will discuss in a later chapter, but having a ‘writing impediment’ is surely one of them as well.

I still remember how I felt when I was ignored. I have seen a similar pain in the eyes of people who don’t do well in the system – are undiagnosed – and are then ignored by it. Nothing can come close to capturing that pain. All I have tried (till yet in vain) is that no child in the future feels as horrible as I felt like after I sat down after I finished reading in front of my class.

Often, I wonder how students with dylsexia felt like before ‘dyslexia’ was a word – perhaps they faced the worst case scenario. That scenario, should be avoided at all costs, since it is crossing that fine line in creating delinquency: victim blaming.

I hope educators realize that they have the most important job in the world. After all, the education sector is the mother of all industries. It has, will and continue to give birth to more industries. And. what is true for for all mothers is true for you: the very people you feed are ungrateful to you, yet still require your benevolence to survive.

As life entails, often beneath all the drudgery of process and protocol, things fall on the wayside. But please remember, that your most important job is not to file paperwork, but help kids find their place in the world – and a second’s attention could save years of somebody’s life.

Everything you do and don’t do has a lasting impact on each one of us. You are not just in charge of your students and society – you are in charge of the future as a concept: something to look forward to in the struggles of the present.