A Message From a Former Student - On Teaching, Statistics, and the Moments that Stay with Students Longer than We Realise

One of the quiet joys of teaching is hearing from former students years later.

After my recent post about studying psychology, a former student reached out with this message (shared with permission).

During my years supervising research projects, his group was the only group who pushed the boundaries and ran a proper two-way ANOVA for their analysis. Most groups would typically use Pearson’s correlation, t-tests, or occasionally a one-way ANOVA.

I still remember lending them an ANOVA reference book from my NUS psychology statistics days so they could explore the method further.

What I also remember about him was his student leadership. Long before he entered my class, colleagues had already mentioned his initiative and reliability. By the time he appeared in my classes, I already knew I was teaching someone willing to stretch himself.

Moments like this remind me that teaching is rarely just about content.

Sometimes it is about helping someone realise they are capable of more than they thought.

Messages like this are a quiet reminder of why teaching — and helping others realise their potential — will always matter to me.