I believed that I am a Lecturer by choice. It had been a long journey for me to become an Academia. It was started from my first position after graduated from my degree program. I had been offered my first job as a Life Underwriter in one of reputable insurance company in Kuala Lumpur. After eight years of working, I still felt that there was an empty space in my life. I had been thinking all the years that my life was incomplete because I did not thrive to achieve my dream to be an educator. From there I learnt that I need to upgrade my academic qualification to fulfil my dream and passion to become a Lecturer. I had managed to get my master’s degree and PhD while I was working. I considered this as my lifetime sacrifice to ensure I am qualified to be a Lecturer or Academia at a reputable University of my dream. Henceforth, this is the beginning of my life to soar high in Academia world. I am thankful to Allah SWT for everything and to ease my ways towards my dream and ambition. I am very grateful to be given an opportunity to be part of Academia in Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM)
My definition of soaring high in academia is to equip myself with the knowledge, qualification, and experiences for to deliver the best for my student’s education and learning experience. Success in academia means difference things to many people and being successful academic staffs are being measured in many ways based on the standards of the University requirements. As for me, to soar high in academia is to be able to inspire and motivate students to develop themselves to be a graduate that fully equipped with long life learnings, attributes, and values to success either in academics or in their future career. Thus, to ensure this objective will be achieved will be based on the knowledge transfer process and teaching and learning methods apply by the lecturer. I will always encourage my students to strive for excellence and to step out from their comfort zone to see the world and face the challengers. This is what we called as providing the students with a long-life education and to develop the students with the knowledge constructed from all the lesson learned during the class. Simultaneously, to develop the practical and generic skills to the students in accordance with the teaching philosophy for every Lecturers or Academia.
My motivation towards soaring in Academia is my student’s achievement. I would like to define the students as my pillar to strive high in Academia world and to keep my track on my soul of Academia. Consistently, I will ensure that I will strive and constantly enhance my knowledge, technical skills and the most important is my own motivations towards improving my teaching and learning methods as well as my personal achievement in research, leadership, and management skill. I believed to be a good lecturer is not only dependent on the knowledge acquired but also will be based on the personal achievement in other fields such as in research, academic advising, leadership in the faculty management and any other relevant field that contribute to the personal achievement towards soaring higher in Academia.
Lastly, as I mentioned earlier student’s achievement was considered as my inspiration to keep me established on my soul of academia. The relationship between a student and a lecturer needs to be developed and sustained. Therefore, an academia needs to improve the teaching and learning methods by getting prudent feedback from the students through the teaching evaluation at the end of every semester. The feedback will help to improve the teaching delivery of an academia and to analyze any teaching feedback for the purpose of teaching improvement as part of academia roles. The feedback from the student will provide information on the teaching and learning methods. I will be overwhelmed to read comments from the students and observe how I had affected the student’s life through the knowledge transferred and skill development of the students. There is nothing more important rather than to know that I have made an impact on someone’s life and able to lead them as our future leader generation with good aspiration and determination towards life.
Let picture tell the story.