Every profession has obligations.

Academia has affection.

A strange, stubborn, undying affection that refuses to die even after decades of disappointments, mountains of bureaucracy, endless syllabi, and generational changes that would exhaust any normal human being.

But academics are not normal human beings.

They’re wired differently — built on equal parts curiosity, patience, memory, and a slightly unreasonable loyalty to learning itself.

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Scene 1: A Classroom in IIT — 8:00 AM Winter Morning

A professor sets up his slides.

Only seven students show up.

He smiles anyway.

Not sarcastically — genuinely.

Because for him, even seven curious minds are enough to justify the morning.

This is love — stupid, innocent, unexplainable love.

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Scene 2: A Retired Oxford Professor — At His Old Desk

He visits his department after ten years.

He runs his fingers across the old oak table and whispers,

“I spent a lifetime here…

and it still feels like home.”

This is not nostalgia.

This is loyalty — the kind you don’t choose, the kind that chooses you.

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Scene 3: A Mid-Tier Indian College — Afternoon Heat

A lecturer sits with a student struggling to pass a basic course.

He explains the same concept for the eighth time, each time softer than the last.

Outside, sunlight is fading.

Inside, patience is glowing.

This is not duty.

This is affection disguised as teaching.

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Scene 4: International Conference, Copenhagen — Two Women Professors

A neuroscientist from Japan tells her friend from Toronto,

“I travelled 8,000 miles for a 20-minute presentation.”

Her friend laughs,

“And we call this… passion?”

They both know the truth.

It’s not passion.

It’s devotion — intense, irrational, beautiful devotion to knowledge.

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Scene 5: Staff Room, 5:15 PM — Anywhere in the World

A young lecturer shuts his laptop after a long day.

Tired, drained, surviving on instant coffee.

He looks at the empty classroom through the window and smiles.

“I got it right today,” he whispers.

Not the syllabus.

Not the attendance.

Not the admin file.

The teaching — the art, the rhythm, the moment when explanation meets understanding.

That moment keeps him alive.

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This Undying Love Has Many Faces

1. Love for Students

Not for their marks, not for their manners —

for their potential.

Academics see a student and instantly imagine what that student could become.

2. Love for Subjects

Some professors are more loyal to their subjects than people are to relationships.

Economists dream in curves.

Physicists see equations in raindrops.

Literature professors fall in love with metaphors like teenagers.

3. Love for Thinking

The world rewards doing.

Academia rewards thinking.

And thinking is addictive.

4. Love for the Classroom

Classrooms are sacred spaces.

Closed doors where generations breathe the same air of learning.

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The Quiet Paradox of Undying Love

Academics complain every day.

They rant about workload.

They fear irrelevance.

They dread bureaucracy.

They lament the mismatch.

And yet…

They show up.

Every single day.

On time.

With notes, slides, stories, questions, and hope.

Only love explains this behaviour.

Rationality left the building long ago.

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Scene 6: A Harvard Professor’s Confession

“When I teach, I feel the world slow down.

It’s the only time life makes sense.”

And her MIT colleague replies,

“When my students learn, I feel young again.”

This is undying love — not dramatic, not poetic, but lived quietly, daily, without applause.

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The Final Truth

Academia survives not because of policy…

not because of funding…

not because of ranking metrics…

It survives because of this ridiculous, beautiful, persistent love that teachers and scholars carry inside them.

Love for knowledge.

Love for students.

Love for the institution.

Love for the possibility that tomorrow’s class might change someone’s life — even if today’s class barely made sense.

Academia doesn’t run on salaries.

It runs on this invisible fuel.

And this fuel never runs out.