Leadership is the ability to affect, direct, or influence a person or a group of people. Self-leadership, on the other hand; is all about leadership except that it applies to oneself instead of others. If leadership is you influencing people to cut on sugar, self-leadership is you influencing yourself to cut your sugar. The influencing part may look similar, but the weight on us is different. Knowing what is good is not the same as doing what is good, the amount of responsibility, commitment, and effort involves in doing is exponentially more than knowing.
Back when I was a student, I got impressed by what I could see from teachers and instructors. Their leadership, charisma and confidence which I couldn’t match were among the things that made me admire and respect them, which was how it was supposed to be — teacher should be admired and respected. Though I still admired and respected those who weren’t that eloquent and confident in their speech, those who were would usually earned more of my admiration and respect. To be the only one standing in front of dozens of people is not easy, to be the only one talking to a crowd is not easy, juggling time between works, consultations, supervisions, and family is not easy, and those who are able to deserve some respect.
However, I was unable to understand how important respect was for them and how hard it was to earn it until I became one of them myself. I’d taught KAFA, tuition, and secondary school students cumulatively about 1 to 2 years before I became a lecturer. Teaching part time and doing practicum was just a drop in the ocean, though still significant; compared to teaching full time at a university. The responsibility keeps on growing, at tuition center it was simply teaching, at school I started preparing lesson plan and got involved with activities, now at university I need to write proposals and papers, supervise and advise students, collaborate with industries, and also engage with the community.
Back then, it was about getting some spare money or fulfilling the requirement for my minor in education. Now, it is about giving back to the country and equally importantly career with many possibilities for growth. Since academia as an environment is getting more challenging and competitive, self-leadership is becoming more important over time to overcome such environment which is to some of us can be quite discouraging and mentally consuming. Self-leadership turns challenges into opportunity by providing me a way to look at and understand myself and my environment differently.
Looking at myself today, teaching more than 150 students each semester for the past year, I’ve become more confident — though not entirely confident — in my teaching and how I prepare my lesson. I’ve also learnt to admit mistake and listen to students’ opinion in class, turning my mistake — which I would correct immediately in class or later in WhatsApp/Telegram groups — into a chance for discussion of what was wrong, or what to avoid or not to do. I take pleasure in teaching, though I have to admit that it can be tiring at time.
My weaker aspects, I would say; is research publication. Most of my time is spent on preparing lesson and teaching, making juggling between teaching and research quite difficult. Reviewing papers would take days which is not something that I could afford except during the night or weekends. Markings and gradings for that many students would take at least a week or two. Those are few of the challenges I am facing as a new lecturer that I need to adapt to in the next two years.
Moving forward, I would like to be better prepared for class to minimise mistake except for the one that I purposely do for discussion. I want it to be more fun and engaging, getting familiar with as many teaching tools as possible. For that to happen, I will have to learn new things and apply for related courses or workshops. Currently, I’ve been tinkering around with Slido, and maybe next is Classpoint, tools that I could use together with my PowerPoint slides or Webex class.
I will try to organise my time better so I could juggle between teaching and research by allocating a specific time every day — maybe an hour or two — to review or write a manuscript. Ideally, I would love to publish four papers a year, but realistically for the next two years having two publications a year without having any postgraduate student is good enough. I will not look for publication opportunity only on indexed journal, I would also look for non-indexed journal if I have to to keep on publishing and also as a way of me practicing my writing.
Conference will be at least once a year. I think I will enjoy meeting people from different mathematical fields, and I will enjoy it even more if it is somewhere I’ve never been to, new place and new food. I went to two conferences when I was a student, the most memorable thing was the people, place, and food, less about the presentation and manuscript editing afterward. Now, as a lecturer I would take conference as an opportunity for me to share my findings and find collaborators from other universities.
I will try to gather as many experience as possible, keep on asking questions to my seniors and mentor who has been advising me since my enrollment, get involve with events, and become a task force or committee. For my future, I wanted to be better in delivering my lessons, applying for grants as a way to get more postgraduates students, publishing my research, and engaging with the communities. I would love to be invited to share my research findings or give a talk on related subjects. If I could achieve all of those, I could see my self an associate professor in the next 5 to 6 years and a professor 11 to 10 years before my retirement.
