November 17, 2023 – Finding Direction

Oh my goodness… I am so grateful today. There is nothing better than someone wanting to and willing to provide some mentorship for the betterment of YOU. It’s amazing to me. The generosity and kindness afforded are unfathomable. I have support from others here and there, but to have someone who I feel like I can be vulnerable with in terms of my work and thinking without conflict of interest or feelings of obligations is amazing. I almost feel that this relationship has been serendipitous and I feel validated and seen with what I need/want to do next.

I am speaking strictly about my career in academia. It’s something that I’ve entered in professionally only a handful of years ago and I floated around for about 8-years before that (aka. an interesting and bewildering career move) and had a fruitful but conflicting career in K-12 education as a high school math teacher. When I look back, everything that I have done in past has been integral to who I am today, but I am baffled as to how I got here and where I want to go to next. What I learned today is, how do I want the next 10-years look to like?

Gosh… planning… LOL. It’s not my strength. My twin-brother got that superpower. Whew… he’s a planner. As for me, I am challenged (again) with grappling with what I want to do as a 5-year plan and then 10-year plan. This call to action (or at least reflection) is career-oriented, but my personal life and wants are also part of the equation. Saying that, my personal life and wants are also integral to my research. I am 100% sure that I do enjoy teaching and learning and that my research agenda is focused on the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL). That’s exciting!!

After my conversation today, I have identified my research focus to build my research program on. THAT WAS AMAZING!!! I had some idea of what I wanted to pursue my research agenda on, but I am so muddled in the duty to service. That’s another thing I need to work on (and possibly another blog post). I am learning what it means to be “selfish” (i.e., service to myself and my work) in academia and realizing that my work is important too. This realization has taken some time… in addition to the importance of REST and to resist the “hustle.”

It’s great to have someone who is a mentor/coach and knows the “business” but has no self-interest in helping except for the intrinsic good of helping someone relatively new to the business. For that, I am grateful. I am also grateful for the feedback, the personal narratives, and emotional responses to help me to truly understand the direction I am heading. I AM SUPER EXCITED. I have no words. To know that I can pursue a research program that is dramatically different from my dissertation and truly meaningful to me personally and professionally is a gift.

I would often use the work PIVOT in my practice to help teacher candidates know that when you make a plan or anticipate how the lesson or unit may go, it’s ok to change your mind in the moment. Well, here I am. I am pivoting and I can’t wait. Yes, some things will take some time to transition away from or to re-navigate, but I feel super stoked about taking the next steps in my research program (with the little time I have in my work day) to pursue something that is meaningful for me. Hopefully my work will be meaningful to others, but for now, the focus is on me.

Again, I believe that everything that has happened in this meandering pedagogical journey was meant to happen the way it has to get to where I am today. I feel very privileged to have people around me to help me along the way to figure out what is really important to me (without the feelings of “I should…” or being worried about what others think or do). What I am most excited about is to learn more about my mom, her story, and thus my story as a second-generation Chinese-Canadian. I never thought I would have a career writing… nor in history either… but here I am.