Ethical Dilemma

 

Ethical Dilemma

This story brings me to my freshman year at the university. I was taking the ancient Greek civilization course that included its history and culture, and the literature both tragedy and comedy. The auditorium for the lecture course was one of the biggest in size as there were students from the entire Historic-Philological department. The scope of students included future educators, journalists, and librarians. The professor was a good known society woman. She happened to be my dad’s schoolteacher, when he was a boy in a Grammar school. Of course, then she was a young enthusiastic lady, not even married yet, and all little boys adored her.

By the time I entered the local city university, she aged. Perhaps she was in her sixties. In one of the weeks, closer to the end of the semester, she called the attendance. It was a lecture course, and everyone was taking notes, because the professor was going off the textbook into deep case studies. It is always difficult to predict what would be on the final exam. Besides, the subject of the lectures included excited interesting material. Students ask questions and the professor collaborated. On the break after a shot chat, she distributed a signed book entitled “Tais from Aphina’s” as a recommended book to read on the discipline for the course. It was not mandatory, but the professor was not an ordinary person as well. She was this old school professor that you only can dream about having as an educator. After she gave me the book, the professor asked me who is my father and from which family I’m from? For years, it was my huge regret that I could not tell her this simple thing. Why was I cloaked? Why I did? Also, my father looked at me with a question on his face and said that I should not be ashamed of my family roots. At this moment, all I was thinking was that it would create a preferred empathy.

Now, after many years, I can look back on this situation. I started to understand why I might have left conflicted about revealing my family connection to my professor. It is natural to want to be recognized for someone’s own abilities and not to have any assumptions made based on my family background. It is okay to keep certain aspects of personal life private, especially when it comes to academic or professional settings. It is important to be proud of your own accomplishments and let them speak for themselves. After all these years, it looks that I should stop worrying because I made the right decision for myself at that time. I was very young, not even twenty years old yet. Just a teenager with professional dreams and ambitions for the future self to be one day a successful professional woman recognized for what I read, for what I learned and discovered. Today I would give this girl an A+ for being proud of herself. Simply because in life academic knowledge is not everything, because you need to be honest and kind. I can hear the skeptic saying that it is a rare character combination. But do not judge so fast, the world is full of goodwill people, and if you did not get across them is because you were looking in all the wrong places. Here is my open letter from the woman I became in present to the teenage girl from the past: “Sweet girl, it was not that you were not enough, it is your energy and passion… it asks other to rise up, and not everyone is willing to go where they would grow.”

Tomshinsky@2024