Why teaching? It might have been one way to clarify to himself his ideas about art. Teaching was a way of clarifying inspiration, too, as he suggests in the letter he would write to Lee Aguinaldo in 1967: "You are right, if you feel like painting, paint. I suggest teaching, not as a substitute, but as a means of exciting oneself. It worked for me to a certain extent." For Tessie Luz, who was one of Zobel's students then, the more obvious reason was "the sheer pleasure of sharing his erudition and love of art with others, especially younger minds. His meager stipend for these courses was dutifully returned to the Ateneo as donations."