Published: 01:11 AM, 17 March 2026
Metropolitan University in Sylhet: Where A Piece of My Heart Still Hangs Around
It was June 2012. I was spending holidays at home in a slightly carefree way. At that time my workplace was located in Dhaka. I took leave from my office for some days for personal reasons. A few weeks earlier I had submitted my curriculum vitae (CV) at a private university in Sylhet a bit casually for the post of Lecturer in English Department. I had earlier taught English language and literature at a few English medium schools and also was an English language instructor at Police Peacekeepers’ Training School at Malibagh in Dhaka city.
To be very frank with readers, I have never been much serious about my corporate life though my past and present colleagues often praise me for my hard work which is really very nice of them despite the fact that I am not exactly sure whether I deserve this compliment. Anyway, in the middle of my holidays one fine morning I received a phone call from Metropolitan University, Sylhet where I had sent my CV.
They informed I would have to sit for a written exam and a verbal test too and conveyed the date and time for the exams. I spoke to my family superiors to seek their advice whether I should attend the job test at that university. They suggested me to face the exams saying that teaching English would not be hard for me as I had accomplished my university education in English language and literature.
I showed up at Metropolitan University, Sylhet according to their schedule to attend the written and verbal tests. To my pleasant surprise I did quite well in both written and verbal tests and was selected for the job. I was asked by the authority to join their university at my earliest convenience as a Lecturer in English Department. The idea of switching from a totally different job to pedagogy stirred a little excitement and slight jitters in my mind.
I started presuming in advance what it would be like to speak to numerous students on lingual and literary subjects inside classrooms. As I joined the university officially in the middle of June 2012, first I had to meet the Head of English Department of that university of that time who assigned me with four courses to deal with.
I still remember I entered the classroom as a teacher for the first time at 8 am in the morning on a momentous day in June 2012. It was quite a large batch of students. All of them were looking at me with eyes full of curiosity trying to judge me by glancing over my appearance. I was lucky enough that it was one of my favorite courses which I was assigned to teach them.
The name of the course was American Prose which consists of essays by some of the American authors I like most--Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson and James Fenimore Cooper. It was more delightful to learn that the students liked my lecture which they told me at the end of the class.
It emboldened me and boosted my confidence. This is how my teaching career began with a cluster of enthusiastic, vibrant and prospective students of that university who have etched longstanding marks on my heart with their love and respect for me.
I always encouraged my students to read extracurricular books besides the textbooks named in their syllabus. Moreover, I all the time advised my students to go through textbooks from first to last pages which would be very helpful for them to grasp the relevant ideas and stories comprehensively. Two of my direct students are currently teaching English literature at Metropolitan University, Sylhet.
I have been away from full time teaching for several years. But my departure from teaching could not snap my affectionate ties with my students. They are still caring enough to call me up over phone. They also meet me when they visit Dhaka. They stay connected with me through social networks too. Till today it's a blissful thing for me to answer their queries on books, research works and different academic matters. I miss my teaching career for reasons of my students and the befitting ambience in Metropolitan University. While I was a teacher nothing gave me more pleasure than interacting with my students. My students are the light of my life.
While concluding, I extend my spontaneous gratefulness to Dr. Toufique Rahman Chowdhury, Chairman Emeritus of Metropolitan University, Sylhet. He is the founder of the university and a fatherly figure for the students as well as for all faculty members and officials over there. Staying in touch with a sublime educationist like Dr. Toufique Rahman Chowdhury is an accomplishment of a lifetime who has transformed Metropolitan University, Sylhet into one of the finest abodes for higher education in Bangladesh. For last around one year or so his qualified son Mr. Tanwir Rahman Chowdhury has been holding the Chairman post in the university with sound and solid professionalism, sagacity, visionary outlooks and smart academic worth and administrative skills.
Mahfuz Ul Hasib Chowdhury
is a contributor to different
English newspapers and magazines.
