When I flunked my first-year university biology course in 1999, I had a bit of internal struggle. Deep down, I knew I was the one to blame, but I couldn’t help thinking that the professor of the course was also partially responsible for my failure. I was very interested and pretty good with biology back in high school, so I declared biochemistry as my major during my 1st year at the university. However, all I could remember about that biology course was the extreme boredom. Every lecture, the professor would photocopy the textbook pages onto transparencies, project them onto the big screen, and then read out line by line. I could not keep my eyes open for the grandeur of “The Great Wall of Text”. Its holy light was simply blinding. His deep, monotonous, God-like voice was oh-so-peaceful. Resistance was futile. Every time I sat in that classroom, it literally took less than a minute for my soul to leave my body. It was an absolute surreal experience. Little did I know that 20 years later I would be teaching biochemistry myself, and littler did I realize that a seed was sown deep in my heart from this experience…

Fast-forwarding 20 years, I was working as a lecturer at the University of Hong Kong where I was assigned to teach biochemistry. When I looked through the text-heavy and molecular pathway-heavy contents that I was about to teach, I had immediate flashbacks of my “surreal biology” class. I said to myself, “No, I can’t let this happen… If I find it torturing to teach this, it’d be even more torturing for my students to learn this from me. I am not a masochist, nor am I a sadist! If I am going to teach this, I will have to make this more enjoyable for everyone, including myself!” That was the pivotal moment when I took up the “sword of planned humour” and began my life-long crusade for the “holy grail of fun” in the classroom.

Classes that are exciting and engaging has the potential to attract more people into a particular field of study. Some of these young people may be geniuses which may end up changing the field for good… We just never know! On the contrary, boring classes may convert someone who is originally interested in a subject into someone who is forever-disgusted by the subject. If, by chance, a potential genius is driven away from a particular field due to a teacher’s boring lectures, it may end up dooming the whole field for decades. Thus, never underestimate the negative impacts of a boring class! After all, we don’t know who is a genius. Albert Einstein was rumoured for not being particular smart in his childhood. Nobel Prize laureate and Fellow of the Royal Society, Sir John Gurdon, was once told by his high school teacher that he was hopeless in pursuing science as a career. Failure didn’t drive these geniuses away from what they did or what they liked. But boredom might have just done the trick! Thank God that they didn’t find their studies to be boring!

As teachers, we are also the motivators, inspirers, entertainers and discovery tour guides of our students. We are responsible for our students’ learning journey. We have the choice and the power to make that a fun and enjoyable journey, which may change their courses of life and enable them to change the world someday.

Alex C. Koon, PhD, FHEA
Senior Lecturer,
School of Life Sciences,
The Chinese University of Hong Kong