My Expedition of Knowledge

Date: 02/22/2023

As I sit down to write my feelings and experience of my first English class in the second
semester, I feel a dilemma where to start. Some friends acknowledge that I am good with words.
However, I have drawn a strong conjecture about myself that I am not very good at expressing
what I feel. This does not mean that I am not passionate about literature. I do read a lot of books,
I also write poems specifically in Nepali language. This brings me to express what I was feeling
when our professor Mr. Binod Duwadi was about to enter our classroom. Being Class
Representative, I had had a conversation with him a day earlier about rescheduling our classes.
In my very first conversation with him, I could feel that he was a very humble person.

When he entered the classroom, my mind started to wander about many things; what is he like in
person? What would I get to learn this semester differently than the last one? Whether or not we
would get to do recreational activities alongside the learning journey. Mr. Duwadi decided to
kick off the session with a brief introduction session in which every student introduced
themselves to the teacher. When our facilitator introduced himself, I was filled with excitement
and enthusiasm as I visualized a semester learning from him. His decent nature and soft spoken
diction was something that I really acknowledged.

After we had finished the introductory session, the facilitator opened a word file which included
the objectives of course, course plan, decorum that was expected to be followed by the students,
evaluation criteria for this semester and more. The evaluation criteria for this semester was quite
different from the last semester. I started wondering if I could stand up to this evaluation criteria
as well. When our facilitator showed the road map of this session, the content that we would read
this semester, I was truly intrigued. The course plan included a novel titled ‘The Alchemist’
which I had read when I was in class 6 (approximately 7 years back from now). The course plan
also included some fascinating topics such as Why go to University? And arranging a marriage
in India.

At the end of the first class, we could also brainstorm about the reasons for being at University.
Some friends also came up with constructive suggestions on how university can be made more
effective. Our facilitator had planned to share a lot more but due to time constraints, we were
unable to do it in the first class. In a nutshell, my experience on the very first day was surreal;
excitement mixed with a little nervousness for this new expedition that I was about to embark on.
However, meeting our facilitator gave me a beacon of hope that this expedition of knowledge
will be very successful.