As evident from the blog title/theme, I teach and conduct research in an university. I started my career as a professional academic five years ago, so I am still a junior member of the trade, but as all of us go through arduous apprenticeships for at least five years (six and a half in my case) before we earn our certification (piled higher and deeper, or whatever you would like to call it), I have been "in the business" for over a decade.
So I feel (smugly) qualified to say that I corrupt (read: nurture) the minds of 17-40 year old persons every day, all the time. I have served as a mentor, substitute parent, elder sister, cheerleader, counselor, and in many other capacities. I am a historian but what I propagate about my discipline is far less significant than what I hope to achieve by guiding and encouraging people to learn all sorts of knowledge and to improve not only the intellectual but also physical and emotional dimensions of their lives.
But like many other professors (I use the term humbly, not to elevate myself as some superior being), I did not learn how to teach systematically, according to theories and frameworks. Unlike educators toiling in the kindergartens through secondary schools, I did not spend years of my life studying child psychology, pedagogical method, and other related subjects. By virtue of spreading knowledge as transmitted to me by my own instructors (with some of my own innovations as garnish), I have been endowed with the privilege of doing "cutting-edge" (as the university administrators would like to believe) research on teaching and learning -- but I never claim to be a "professional educator," but just a "professional researcher who teaches."
So, I have an enduring complex about becoming a parent. I helped my parents raise my younger sister who is seven years younger than me. I have been the mother of two cats for ten years. So perhaps because of the empirical evidence I have collected through those experiences, I am more apprehensive about embarking on the task of being one of two primary "parental units" for a person who will be my responsibility until she reaches legal and social maturity.
This blog will therefore be partly therapeutic, helping me working out a variety of issues, and partly philosophical, contemplating how I can adapt some of what I have learned from teaching to parenting -- two skills which are very different but which share some common aspects.
I hope that my daughter will be forgiving of the many mistakes that I will make, that she will recognize that while I am far from perfect, I am not vainly unaware of my shortcomings, and that she will be a happier child than I was able to be (for many reasons to be explained in future posts).
So I feel (smugly) qualified to say that I corrupt (read: nurture) the minds of 17-40 year old persons every day, all the time. I have served as a mentor, substitute parent, elder sister, cheerleader, counselor, and in many other capacities. I am a historian but what I propagate about my discipline is far less significant than what I hope to achieve by guiding and encouraging people to learn all sorts of knowledge and to improve not only the intellectual but also physical and emotional dimensions of their lives.
But like many other professors (I use the term humbly, not to elevate myself as some superior being), I did not learn how to teach systematically, according to theories and frameworks. Unlike educators toiling in the kindergartens through secondary schools, I did not spend years of my life studying child psychology, pedagogical method, and other related subjects. By virtue of spreading knowledge as transmitted to me by my own instructors (with some of my own innovations as garnish), I have been endowed with the privilege of doing "cutting-edge" (as the university administrators would like to believe) research on teaching and learning -- but I never claim to be a "professional educator," but just a "professional researcher who teaches."
So, I have an enduring complex about becoming a parent. I helped my parents raise my younger sister who is seven years younger than me. I have been the mother of two cats for ten years. So perhaps because of the empirical evidence I have collected through those experiences, I am more apprehensive about embarking on the task of being one of two primary "parental units" for a person who will be my responsibility until she reaches legal and social maturity.
This blog will therefore be partly therapeutic, helping me working out a variety of issues, and partly philosophical, contemplating how I can adapt some of what I have learned from teaching to parenting -- two skills which are very different but which share some common aspects.
I hope that my daughter will be forgiving of the many mistakes that I will make, that she will recognize that while I am far from perfect, I am not vainly unaware of my shortcomings, and that she will be a happier child than I was able to be (for many reasons to be explained in future posts).
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