The Flea Surgeon in Our Math Class

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In secondary school, we had a math teacher famously known among students as the flea surgeon. Not because he treated animals or did anything medical, but because of how he operated, meticulously, patiently, and with a focus so intense, you’d think he was doing brain surgery on fleas.

He didn’t care much about your final answer. What truly mattered to him was how you arrived there. “Don’t just give me the answer,” he’d say, adjusting his glasses. “Show your working. Every, single step.” If you skipped even one minor calculation or failed to label your diagram, he’d circle it in red and write ‘incomplete solution’ at the top, even if your final answer was correct.

Some students found it frustrating, especially those who just wanted to breeze through math without showing their methods. But over time, we came to understand him. He wasn’t harsh; he was detailed to the core. He taught us that the journey to the answer was just as important as the answer itself.

One day, someone jokingly called him “the flea surgeon” in class. He laughed and said, “Good! Because if I can teach you to think like one, you’ll make fewer mistakes in life.”

Looking back, he wasn’t just teaching math, he was training our minds to value process over shortcuts. And maybe, just maybe, that’s what made him one of the best.

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@ritaetim