A Gift Overdue — Reflection
There are some conversations that we don’t realize are important until much later.
At the time, you simply listen, respond and move on. You don’t know that years later, you might still remember exactly what someone told you.
For my “A Gift Overdue” project, I was asked to think about someone who had positively influenced my life but whom I had never properly thanked. When I started thinking about the people who had played a role in my journey, I immediately remembered Sir Ahtasham from Sir Adamjee Institute.
I was in my second year of college when he encouraged me during a period when I was still trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. I had ambitions, but I was not always confident in myself or sure about whether I could achieve what I wanted.
I still remember him telling me:
“Hanzalah, You have the potential to do something great for yourself and for the society as well. You have to understand your goals and go for it. Bs apnay aap ke andar dekho and find out who I’m and Allah made me for some reason.”
At that time, I listened to his words, but I don’t think I understood how long I would remember them.
The advice I remembered
What stayed with me was how simple his advice was.
He didn’t give me a detailed career plan or tell me exactly what profession I should choose. Instead, he asked me to understand my own goals and then work towards them.
That meant something to me because, as a student, I often looked to teachers for direction. I expected them to tell me what I should do next. His advice made me think differently. Maybe I didn’t need someone else to decide my future for me. I needed to understand what I wanted and then take responsibility for pursuing it.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but that was an important lesson for me.
What happened afterwards
A lot has changed since that conversation.
I completed my Bachelor’s degree in Software Engineering and later started my Master’s in Artificial Intelligence at NUST. I continued building my knowledge in technology and AI, started teaching and eventually founded InterTech Learning Hub.
My journey has not always been clear or easy. There have been times when I questioned my decisions, felt unsure about my direction or wondered whether I was capable of doing something I had set out to do.
Whenever that happened, the message behind Sir Ahtasham’s advice remained relevant to me.
Understand your goals and go for them.
I don’t think his words directly determined every decision I made. Rather, they became one of the small reminders I carried with me whenever I needed to make a decision or push myself forward.
Why was my thank you overdue?
This was probably the most meaningful part of the project for me.
I had received that encouragement years ago, but I had never gone back to tell him what it meant to me.
I had assumed that because the conversation was so memorable to me, perhaps he would remember it too. But realistically, he was a teacher speaking to students, and he must have had countless conversations with students throughout the years.
There was a good chance that this particular conversation was just an ordinary moment for him.
It wasn’t ordinary for me.
That made me realize something: we often don’t tell people when their words or actions have genuinely helped us. We remember those moments privately but assume the other person already knows.
They may not.
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Sometimes the person who helped you has no idea that you still remember what they said.
Writing the letter
Writing the letter was more difficult than I expected.
I knew I wanted to say thank you, but simply writing “thank you” didn’t feel enough. I had to explain why I was thanking him after so many years.
I started thinking about that conversation again and asked myself what exactly had stayed with me.
It wasn’t just the fact that a teacher had encouraged me.
It was that, at a time when I was uncertain about myself, someone I respected made me feel that I was capable of doing something meaningful if I understood what I wanted and genuinely worked towards it.
That is what I wanted him to know.
So I wrote about that moment, the advice he gave me and how I had carried its message into different stages of my life.
Here is the Link of the Letter that I gave to Sir Ahtasham:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1AmBZAOR2E2eiTGC6eQv8GZDzxVXgN2zf6CLSMvdQr4U/edit?usp=sharing
Giving him the letter
When I finally gave him the letter, it felt a little strange.
I was standing in front of someone who had been part of my college life years ago, talking about a conversation that I had remembered all this time.
I wasn’t sure how he would react or whether he would even remember the incident.
But the important part for me was that I finally said something I should probably have said years earlier:
“Sir, that conversation mattered to me.”
That was the real purpose of the letter.
What I took away from this
This project made me pay more attention to the small ways people influence each other.
Before doing this project, I thought of gratitude mostly as thanking someone for something they had done for me. This experience made me think about another side of it.
Sometimes a person gives you something without realizing they have given it to you.
In my case, Sir Ahtasham gave me a few words of encouragement. He probably didn’t know that I would remember them years later, but I did.
It also made me think about the students I have taught over the years. As a teacher myself, I now understand that I may say something to a student without realizing that they could remember it for a very long time.
That is something I want to be more conscious of.
We don’t always get the opportunity to know how our words affect someone. But when we do realize that someone has helped us, I think we should tell them.
I had waited several years to do that.
This project finally gave me a reason to stop waiting.
Sir Ahtasham, this letter was for you.
Thank you.
