Today is a sad day.

I received news this afternoon that one of my favourite tutors of all time, Mrs Sheila Fernandez, or Mrs F. for short, has passed away. Her funeral was this afternoon. I couldn't make it. As cliche as it seems, pity we don't appreciate people enough while they are alive, only to regret when they are gone.

Mrs F. made the word 'scaffolding' come alive. When we were being taught by her, she risked her job to guide us to be better teachers. 'Process writing' as we call it, was only theoretical. Yet she was the tutor who made it come alive and implemented it with us. Which tutor would make you work on schedule, get your work peer-edited and then tutor-edited before final grading by the tutor herself? Teachers who've only heard of process writing will only complain that it's a lot of work, but she showed me that the 'a lot of work' was worth it. I learnt so much from her.

I'm glad I was once her student. Guess what? Ben knew her too. She was once from St. Gabriel's. We were pleasantly surprised to find out that we had a teacher in common.

Oh. Once I saw Mrs F's name in an NIE publication. It was Drs. I was really happy for her coz I thought she had completed her doctorate. I think she was doing her thesis when she was teaching us. Talk about 'a lot of work'. However, it was only a typo as the subsequent issue had 'Mrs' instead of Dr.

Thank you Mrs F for imparting the meaning of being a great teacher to me. You will always be remembered.