Every single one of us has to deal with teachers at one point or another in our life. We usually encounter this type of people for the first time when we go to school. Being unprepared and clueless children of 5-7 years of age, we are being carried over from parents to our next biggest authority, the teacher. From that time on we have to get used to meeting new people and getting along with them.

Some teachers are helpful and understanding, others are overly demanding and uncompromising. Some give you invaluable life lessons, and others do more harm than good. And yet, even the latter ones facilitate your learning process, albeit in their own convoluted way. Teachers are supposed to help us learn certain subjects, but they often do more than that. They give us an idea of what the real world would be like. Good teachers do that consciously, while bad teachers do that involuntarily.

So, what should we do if we come across a bad teacher? Depending on situation, I would suggest looking for somebody more competent to replace him/her, if that is possible (you usually have a chance to do that, when attending a certain training course or taking individual lessons), or if not (we don’t normally have much choice as far as teachers in high schools and universities are concerned), try to make the best of the experience. Consider it an interesting challenge. Just imagine how, after you learn to deal with this person, it will be easy for you to communicate with other difficult individuals.

Unfortunately, you cannot avoid meeting unpleasant people in your life. There are a lot of nice and kind characters in this world, but there are also a lot of them who are not so nice. In your working life you will meet a wide variety of people. Not all of them are going to be pleasant, and that’s when your experience with a bad teacher will be of use.