Rewarding job
Being a faculty member of a research university is different than in teaching universities or colleges. Research is a big or dominant part of our duties. Formally, my current load is 60% for research, 20% teaching and 20% service. In reality, teaching actually takes most of my time and energy.
I love doing research. I enjoy staring for hours looking at random facts and having a never-ending daydream trying to make sense of them. I love collecting stories of people and spend thousand hours trying to untangle knots and to connect dots.
But teaching gives me a different sensation. Standing in front of the class, looking around that room at all those faces and knowing that I have information or at least access to information that might eventually help them in the future makes me feel “at home.”
I love those moments when my class bursting out laughing at my jokes. I enjoy those hours when students are drawn into enthusiastic (heated!) exchanges. The feeling I get when I witness the students ‘get it’ is indescribable. Those moments when their eyes are lightened, indicating that they finally get it, are precious!
Getting great evaluation reports (here in the US, students evaluate teachers/professors at all time) is nice. Rated highly at Ratemyprofessor dot com is really cool (haha, don’t take my rating there seriously!). But nothing is more rewarding than having your student sent you an email like this in the morning before you class:
“Morning Professor! Looking forward to your class today!”
Or even more so, when your ex-students come (or write) and thank you for what you’ve done for them (unknowingly!). If A student did that, I’m excited but that’s not spectacular. What really amaze me is when thank you emails come from students who didn’t get A, just like the one who sent me this email below.
He wrote:
“I am an extremely introverted person so it is hard for me to really speak out in class and get acquainted with my professors. You classes were really the only ones where I broke out of my shell and was able to speak up. You provided the intimate feel in class that drew me in to my major. You really opened my eyes to the inequalities that we overlook on a daily basis and you are one of the few people that inspired me to further my education in order to have some sort of power to change the issues a number of unfortunate people face today [...] what you’ve done really meant a lot to me.”
This email made my day! Coming from him, that statement means a lot to me too. Honestly, I don’t really feel that I have done something. While I enjoy teaching very much, most of time or all the time I feel that I haven’t done enough. I don’t perceive myself as a great teacher, there’s just so much room for improvement, really.
This kind of statement, however, encourages me to learn and improve, more and more. It’s like a fresh breath of air. Ensuring me again that teaching is one of the most rewarding jobs one can get.
Agree totally with you. I *ENJOY* teaching. For several years (1998-2007), I even taught without getting paid properly. (Long story. In short I was a renegade and didn’t want to obey administrativia rules of being a Pegawai Negeri Sipil
So, they stopped my salary. I didn’t care.). Anyway …
There are things that I hate about teaching is that …
(1) I have problem memorizing names and with big classes … that does it. I feel uneasy when my students greet me and I don’t know their names. I feel guilty, but what can I do?
(2) If I found that there’s a lazy student. Or even worse, a student cheated in my class. I do extra miles for my students so that they don’t have to cheat. (eg. remedial exams for those who failed the first time – yes, at one point I did 3 remedial exams just to make sure that the students tried their best, etc.)
But other than that … teaching is wonderful. I wouldn’t traded it for anything.
Nice posting, Mer!
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morning professor! looking forward to your class!
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Really nice and encouraging, teh Mer. I’m really proud of you!
Sometimes I think I can be caught up in what I do that I forget why I love what I do. Your posting reminds me again of how people should do the job, but more importantly, the job should also “do” the people.
To Pak Budi Raharjo,
I haven’t had much teaching experience but this is what I tried to do in the past to remember students’ names. Of course, we would always introduce ourselves during the first class. But then, I tried to ask students handed in something to me at the beginning/end of a class meeting. It could be a quiz answer, it could be a paragraph about the book we read, or a sentence about possible paper topic. Then when students gave me their answers, I tried to remember some of their names. When they spoke in class, I would ask for their names and then repeat them again, not only for myself to remember, but also for other students to remember.
Hope this would help at all. And I always reminded myself to give me some time, because getting to know students or even our own friends always takes time.
I’m sure teh Mer has a lot of other ideas as well.
Love this blog!
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My classes are kinda … big
One of the classes right now has … ehmm, oh, 85 students!
Of course that’s an excuse. Even with smaller class, I still have difficulties memorizing names. (Which part of the brain is this fuction located?)
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BR: thanks, mas. i’m convinced that you enjoy teaching
having your students cheated is really a big setback — that makes me upset…. about remembering names, i cannot say i’ll remember 85 students (yes that’s big), but (surprisingly, since on certain areas i can be very forgetful, hehe) i can remember around 50 students… including their last names…
cg: you make my day
now i’m going to bed…. don’t come to haunt my dream, ok? 
pam: thanks for your love, dear
i should keep reminding myself how i fell in love with the job…. hope i still can enjoy teaching as much I do now, once i’m old and grumpy 
thanks for sharing your idea on remembering names…
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The letter from your introvert student gave me goose bumps
. Apart from being a favorite prof and successful researcher, you’re already super duper as a human hehehe *cliche but that’s what you are*
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Interesting… I am always hesitant to be ‘close’ to my profs let alone sending email about looking fwd to his/her classes. I mean some are really good and I really want to show my appreciation but I think they must be bored. Each year it’s the same stuff, same drama, same students.
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santi: haha….. i’m not. i’m an alien.
v.: you’d be surprised to find out that your profs wouldn’t be bored receiving such email
— except if you keep receiving similar email from the same student hehe — and i found out each year has its own color, to a certain degree.
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i put my Mother Tongue’s Blog here. nyahaha, i like your opinion here. it’s like being needed for good and enjoyable reasons keep me fighting (for something that tiring me sometimes)
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If one dedicates 6 hours a day to sleep, 6 hours to the loved one and 12 hours to the job, means that a rewarding job makes up for 50% happiness. And obviously your job is very fitting and very rewarding. It may partly explain why you are so happy and upbeat.
Though I never had the privilege of experienc ing your teaching, I absolutely and totally second this student’s opinion: “gorgeous hot prof, witty and smart”.
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putri: thanks…. i see that you have soooo many blogs… wow, how do you maintain them? i have three (where two others are less active than this) and i have hard time maintaining them.
colson: glad to know that happiness transpires
you a happy person yourself. if i could do 6-6-12, perhaps i’d be in cloud nine! i spend sometimes 12 hours a day working, but other times it’s 2 hours a day…or 0 hour! i don’t work when i don’t feel like doing it. but to sleep and to the loved one, i always like devoting time! as for that opinion…. oh, no comment *blush*.
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Very glad to read your latest blog on research & teaching
On research: your ability to make beautiful sketches on traveling shows that you also can make a wonderful inferences, relations & representation of the randoms facts ( to answer random curiosity
.
On teaching: In this era of ‘what’s-next web 2.0 generation
’, i think teaching is more challenging, because student easily getting bored
On both+ etc: congratulation for your Marvelous, Magnificent, Majestic, Miraculous & M………… life & achievement !
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My long term career plan is to become a teacher. Now on my way to get master degree first.
Hopefully I’d be one of those cool, inspirational, and incredible teachers, just like you.. or even better
, though not sure you could be beaten ;p
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nemo: thanks…. yes, teaching is more challenging these days, to fight excessive uses of Web 2.0 i use Web 2.0 in class!
ichi: ahaha….. you’d make a better teacher than me, Ichi
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Good morning, Prof, looking forward to seeing you today. Ahahaha….
Btw, the ‘Hotness’ rating is missing (or should I say censored?). Great reviews from your students. No wonder, you bribed them with songs and pizzas! Good old tricks! Ahahahaa….
Joke aside, bravo!
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novel: haha… bribing does work to a certain degree. H-ness works without limit
and yes, it’s censored :p
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Super-Duper internet site! I am loving it!! Will arrive back again again – taking you feeds also, Thanks.
Hello. Wonderful job. I didn’t anticipate this on the Wednesday. This is a excellent story. Thanks!
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This work by Merlyna Lim is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at www.merlyna.org.
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