The reality of being a college professor in Venezuela

It's not a secret for anyone: This has been one of the most beaten and disrespected guilds in Venezuela. Having said that, I must confess: I didn’t want to be a teacher. I enrolled in college to study something else, but the quota was given to me for the school of Education. Today, almost 10 years as a graduate, I firmly believe that despite the difficulties, there is no better profession than teaching, especially university.

In this particular context, being a university professor is like being in labor every day. We face the crisis with gallantry, with patched clothing, broken shoes, often with an empty stomach, with that little pain that we can’t alleviate due to lack of medicines or because of the high cost of them, we are swimming against a flow imposed, every time stronger, a flow that drags human values, leaving behind only debris and where the principles tend to be easily diluted.

We face a generation with its own characteristics, with its particular way of seeing the world, technologically quite advanced and not for that, more advantaged. It is the youth that today faces a bad time to be young, especially in this country:

- Profe, sorry for the delay. I'm working at night to pay for my dad's dialysis. - Profe, I couldn't come because I was in prison. - Profe, I'm leaving because I got my mom's chemo in Maracay and I have to go find her. - Profe, today I'm not going. I must queuing for domestic gas.

And even more painful is this student whose absence reverberates and who has no more opportunities to apologize, for violence, hunger or illness.

Our life is a constant adoption of battles of students as their own, whether individual or group. Every tear of them also runs down our cheeks, every pain silenced by them we perceive, it hurts us. However, every achievement of them, however small, deserves to be celebrated, because surely behind that triumph there was much fear, frustration, tears and difficulties to face. In that moment, also their triumphs are ours.

I'll never thank enough for having been chosen for this profession, which has given me so much strength, so many satisfactions and the opportunity to live with true and great heroes. Being a teacher will always be worth it. Being a teacher is a matter of passion, vocation and desire to continue learning from the best teachers: Our students.

Today is the Professor's day in Venezuela. So, happy day, colleagues! Stay strong!