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The professor wanted to convey a message to us in this first class and chose "Stay Hungry" by Twisted Sister for that purpose
By Mauricio Oliveira
Surely everyone has a primary or secondary school teacher they still remember fondly. I, fortunately, had several incredible examples of people who taught me a lot during my childhood and adolescence. They taught me things beyond the content of a subject. And one of those lessons I learned came through Twisted Sister.
At the time I was 14 years old, in my first year of high school, and I was having my first English class with Professor Zé Paulo. Because it was a new period in our lives, the professor wanted to convey a message to us in that first class and chose "Stay Hungry" by Twisted Sister for that. This was exactly when I was starting to listen to hard rock and metal, but I had never heard anything from Twisted Sister besides the classics "I Wanna Rock" and "We're Not Gonna Take It" (which are from the same album, by the way).
Teachers who are fans of heavy metal are rare these days…
What the teacher tried to convey to us in that class was that from now on we should go it alone and fight for our desires. We cannot let ourselves be defeated by difficulties, we cannot show fear and appear weak. We must fight with all our strength and pursue what we want. Exactly what the song lyrics say.
Obviously, for an audience of about 15 years old, he tried to convey this message in a less harsh way. But time passes quickly, and soon we would be adults, and the lyrics of "Stay Hungry" showed many things we should realize. We would be alone on our journey, and there's no place for "wannabes," for the bad ones, or for those who have already passed. For me, it was a very different and inspiring lesson that I will always remember.
The other day I read a text that a friend of mine shared on some social network that talked about personal projects. Everyone (or almost everyone) has some desire, some dream, some idea that they would like to pursue, but often we end up putting it aside for various reasons.
And that's precisely what the text criticized, making a comparison to brushing your teeth. We brush our teeth every day (I hope, anyway), but we don't dedicate ourselves to our dream, our project, every day. Reading this text reminded me of many Wikimetal interviews, where the last question the Wikitrio asks the interviewee is usually: "What advice can you give to a kid who's just starting out in the music world, trying to put together a band?", and the answer is almost always the same: don't give up and keep doing what you love.
Of course, it's much easier said than done. Everyone has other things to do: work, study, clean the house, go out with family, sleep, cook, iron, take care of the dog… and even when we have free time, we often end up dedicating less time to our personal projects than we would like for some other reason.
The idea from the text I read can then be very well applied: if you do all those other things and brush your teeth every day, why not dedicate yourself to it every day too? It's worth the effort; all the great musicians interviewed by Wikimetal and my teacher Zé Paulo gave the same advice: pursue what you love and dedicate yourself to it. Stay hungry with desire.
Cover of Stay Hungry (Twisted Sister, 1984)
*This text was written by a Wikimate and does not necessarily represent the opinions of the site's authors.
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