I became Dr. Galal Amin's Teaching Assistant in September 2005, in my first semester after I resumed my M.A.... Members of the Economics Department were surprised when I told them because apparently Dr. Amin doesn't take on any assistants... I took this as a great compliment and an honor to work with such a great intellectual and thinker... The first time I came in contact with Dr. Galal Amin was back in 1979 as an undergraduate... He had just returned to Egypt after many years abroad and joined AUC's Economics Department... The course I attended with him was the "Economy of Egypt" and it was one of the most stimulating courses ever... Not only was Dr. Amin a genius of a professor in terms of economic analysis, but he also had a great incomparable sense of humor that captured and maintained the complete and undivided attention of his audience, for the full duration of his lecture... And most importantly: he feared no one... He was so open in his criticism of everything and everyone and expressed it with candor... Most of all he was openly critical of the peace treaty with Israel and dissected its economic implications. He was equally disapproving of the 1974 Open Door Policy (Infitah), which he regarded as an unchecked consumerism policy rather than an investment stimulant or long term development strategy, with the obvious negative implications on a developing economy like Egypt's... He was an egalitarian who was unabashedly biased to the less fortunate, poorer strata of society... This was a breath of fresh air in the midst of the newly emerging capitalist mentality that was prevailing in the late 1970s... I considered myself very fortunate to be closely working with this icon; a great privilege...
I spent around two and a half years, from September 2005 to December 2007, assisting Dr. Amin and to me that experience alone was well worth my whole M.A. program, all twenty seven years of it! To help the undergraduates attending his introductory Microeconomics Economics course, I made a point to initially attend his class, to make sure that I'm in sync... I took notes and rewrote them neatly and Samuelson's book "Economics" became my new best friend! I arranged for study groups with the students in the library and we went over past exam questions so that I give them a feel of what to expect and how to tackle Dr. Amin's searching questions which were more about quality rather than quantity... I also warned them that he was a fair but tough grader who is almost impossible to bluff, and could easily discover whether they really understood the concepts or were just spilling information ad verbatim... I have seen him give a zero to a 2-page answer to a question and rightly so, while giving a full mark of 10 to half a page plus a graph answer, and rightly so too... And he was uncompromising in his ethics... I tried once to intervene on behalf of a student who was on probation and who pleaded with me to go speak to Dr. Amin after getting an F and a D on 2 consecutive exams so that Dr. Amin can give him a make-up exam... Dr. Amin gave me a piece of his mind and almost shouted at me, he told me that one should never intervene on behalf of students who didn't do their job and advised the boy to take an incomplete and go study and come back when he was ready... The boy did that and I worked very hard with him and he had his exam when he was ready and he passed! I learnt my lesson and never repeated that gaffe! On another occasion, some of the students had other engagements and couldn't meet with the rest of the group in the library's study area, and since they had an exam I made an exception and told them they could come to my house. I phoned Dr. Amin to reassure him that I was helping the kids and told him that I'll be tutoring them in my house. Minutes later he calls me back... "What do you mean you're tutoring the kids in your house, is this a private lesson, are you taking money for this?"... I was aghast... "Of course not Dr. Galal... I'm doing it for free. I'm helping them because first it's my job and second they are like my own kids."... "Good. I was just making sure. Giving private lessons is unacceptable." The epitome of academic ethics... Just my cup of tea...
Over the course of two and a half years I taught five different groups of students, over five semesters... Due to his reputation as a great professor and a tough grader, Dr. Amin's class attracted the best and most hard-working students... but we also had the occasional less than par ones; they either dropped the course after the first or maximum second exam, or changed their attitude and worked really hard for their grades. I was extremely satisfied when I saw such metamorphosis because I became very emotionally attached to the students and awaited their final grades with anticipation, just like a parent would. However my last semester of fall 2007 was the pinnacle of my career, it was my very best... Most of the students were either kids of my friends or friends of my daughter Farida... And they were very clever and hard working... But some of them really drove me nuts because they wanted me to write down "model" answers for them so that they memorize them à-la Thanaweya Amma or I.G. but I categorically refused... "Guys, I'm not sela7 el telmeeth", I said! You have to wreck your brains and understand the concepts well to be able to answer Dr. Amin's probing questions... I finally got through to them and most of them were a pleasure to teach... I single out Dina A.F. the daughter of fellow PSSian and AUCian Amira H., Mona A. the daughter of PSSian Nadia K., Dina the daughter of friend Manal, Hala S. and Sara; and from the boys Madkour, Deeb (Wolf), Magdi, Abaza the nephew of PSSian Nemat A., and Ahmed. From the previous semesters I single out Farida M., Yomna, Sara, Aya, Mariam, Ahmed, Mohamed and Ali S. Most of them ended with an A, and some with a B plus or a B (for which I reprimanded them!)... It was a pleasure teaching all these kids over the last two years; I hope I succeeded in reaching out to them and taught them something in the process... Getting involved with them not only gave me immeasurable satisfaction, but it also accelerated my recapture of my long forgotten Economics and allowed me to practice one of my favorite hobbies: teaching Economics... Would I become a full fledged Economics Professor, even on a part-time basis? Remains to be seen...
I spent around two and a half years, from September 2005 to December 2007, assisting Dr. Amin and to me that experience alone was well worth my whole M.A. program, all twenty seven years of it! To help the undergraduates attending his introductory Microeconomics Economics course, I made a point to initially attend his class, to make sure that I'm in sync... I took notes and rewrote them neatly and Samuelson's book "Economics" became my new best friend! I arranged for study groups with the students in the library and we went over past exam questions so that I give them a feel of what to expect and how to tackle Dr. Amin's searching questions which were more about quality rather than quantity... I also warned them that he was a fair but tough grader who is almost impossible to bluff, and could easily discover whether they really understood the concepts or were just spilling information ad verbatim... I have seen him give a zero to a 2-page answer to a question and rightly so, while giving a full mark of 10 to half a page plus a graph answer, and rightly so too... And he was uncompromising in his ethics... I tried once to intervene on behalf of a student who was on probation and who pleaded with me to go speak to Dr. Amin after getting an F and a D on 2 consecutive exams so that Dr. Amin can give him a make-up exam... Dr. Amin gave me a piece of his mind and almost shouted at me, he told me that one should never intervene on behalf of students who didn't do their job and advised the boy to take an incomplete and go study and come back when he was ready... The boy did that and I worked very hard with him and he had his exam when he was ready and he passed! I learnt my lesson and never repeated that gaffe! On another occasion, some of the students had other engagements and couldn't meet with the rest of the group in the library's study area, and since they had an exam I made an exception and told them they could come to my house. I phoned Dr. Amin to reassure him that I was helping the kids and told him that I'll be tutoring them in my house. Minutes later he calls me back... "What do you mean you're tutoring the kids in your house, is this a private lesson, are you taking money for this?"... I was aghast... "Of course not Dr. Galal... I'm doing it for free. I'm helping them because first it's my job and second they are like my own kids."... "Good. I was just making sure. Giving private lessons is unacceptable." The epitome of academic ethics... Just my cup of tea...
Over the course of two and a half years I taught five different groups of students, over five semesters... Due to his reputation as a great professor and a tough grader, Dr. Amin's class attracted the best and most hard-working students... but we also had the occasional less than par ones; they either dropped the course after the first or maximum second exam, or changed their attitude and worked really hard for their grades. I was extremely satisfied when I saw such metamorphosis because I became very emotionally attached to the students and awaited their final grades with anticipation, just like a parent would. However my last semester of fall 2007 was the pinnacle of my career, it was my very best... Most of the students were either kids of my friends or friends of my daughter Farida... And they were very clever and hard working... But some of them really drove me nuts because they wanted me to write down "model" answers for them so that they memorize them à-la Thanaweya Amma or I.G. but I categorically refused... "Guys, I'm not sela7 el telmeeth", I said! You have to wreck your brains and understand the concepts well to be able to answer Dr. Amin's probing questions... I finally got through to them and most of them were a pleasure to teach... I single out Dina A.F. the daughter of fellow PSSian and AUCian Amira H., Mona A. the daughter of PSSian Nadia K., Dina the daughter of friend Manal, Hala S. and Sara; and from the boys Madkour, Deeb (Wolf), Magdi, Abaza the nephew of PSSian Nemat A., and Ahmed. From the previous semesters I single out Farida M., Yomna, Sara, Aya, Mariam, Ahmed, Mohamed and Ali S. Most of them ended with an A, and some with a B plus or a B (for which I reprimanded them!)... It was a pleasure teaching all these kids over the last two years; I hope I succeeded in reaching out to them and taught them something in the process... Getting involved with them not only gave me immeasurable satisfaction, but it also accelerated my recapture of my long forgotten Economics and allowed me to practice one of my favorite hobbies: teaching Economics... Would I become a full fledged Economics Professor, even on a part-time basis? Remains to be seen...
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