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More FAQs |
Teaching | PhD | Email me your questions |
| Teaching | |||
| Why did you want to make teaching your career? | |||
| Although both of my parents were teachers (they are now retired), I never thought about being one until I had worked for a bank for a while after I got my first degree in English. I then thought I could do more than writing two letters a week to promote international banking relations. I also thought teaching was one of the good things that people can do for one another and it was likely that teaching was something that I could do well. When I finally started teaching, there have been hundreds of times when I (a chronic self-doubter) thought I was mistaken (teaching is good, of course, but I'm probably not up to it), and I have constantly asked myself whether I made the right decision over the past eight years. But after the two classes that I taught just before I left Bangkok for Cambridge, it was quite reassuring that I did. | |||
| What do you like about teaching? | |||
| I've written elsewhere that teaching is always enjoyable and rewarding. (I wish to add here that it is so especially when the students take learning seriously and are cooperative. | |||
| PhD | |||
| Why didn't you continue for a PhD right after you got your MPhil in 1998? | |||
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At that time I still didn't have a topic that I'd be happy to live with for at least three years. I didn't think I had enough money. I missed home and teaching. And most imortantly, I wanted to make sure that I'd want to teach for the rest of my life. I didn't actually plan to come back to Cambridge this late (ie five years later), though, but as many people know, I'm slow in doing everything. It took me a year to come up with a dream topic (Time conceptualization), another year to write a proposal, still another year to get readmission, and one more year and three months to wait for a scholarship. All this was why I started my PhD in the Lent Term 2003. |
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| Why did you continue for a PhD? | |||
| Somewhere between July 1998 and November 1999, I started to think that I wanted to teach for the rest of my life. I came up with a research topic, applied for readmission, got it, applied for a scholarship, and got it, but then, following a few things that happened at my workplace, started to wonder if I really wanted to teach for the rest of my life. After having had a hard time deciding, I realized it wasn't teaching that posed difficulty but other things that came with it, which were nicely phrased the administrative responsibilities required of all the faculty members (though some were inevitably required to do more than the others). Then, I needed to think if I'd want to abandon what I loved doing in order to avoid doing what I didn't like because one of the scholarship's conditions was that I'd have to work for the same workplace for twice as long as the time I'd spend to get a PhD. I was too busy to have time to come up with the answer, though. But as at least I knew that this was what was preferred by most of my nearest and dearest, I made up my mind to come here. (I sound very much like my MA students whose reply to my question "why are you doing your MA?" was "It's what my mother/parents want(s) me to do, and I have no excuse for this. But I know I'll be better equipped when I teach after these three years.) | |||