Today when my zoom lesson ended I realised something. I missed THAT kid. The one that takes ages to pack away. The one that lingers when everyone has left. The one that needs to know if timetravel is possible or if antimatter exists. The one that just really wants to know.

Curiosity can be shy, and some of the most meaningful moments for me have occurred only after the lesson has ended. It is then when aliens and blackholes, that have rulled the imagination, find a time to become a topic of conversation. To take form as a question of possibility.

That is my job, to listen to it, to encourage it, to stretch it, to challenge it, to congratulate it for forming. All of the pupils that made the decision to take this subject further had themselves, in their past, a moment of misty eyed wonder where they thought "this is cool".

The awesomeness of the Universe, the excitement of knowing that, limited though we may be, our minds are capable of forming an understanding that conteracts our terrifying smallness and offsets the apparent meaninglessness of people. That is science people. SCIENCE.

And here I am, consumed by restlessness to share a wider view, a deeper perspective, a nugget of curiosity, a contradiction, a mystery, a story. It's the poetry of the Universe.

"He goes off on a tangent", "He doesn't stick to the specification" these pupils want a qualification. Good luck to them, but I will tell you this - I miss that kid that hangs behind to ask those hard-to-answer questions, for that kid is me. #iteachphysics