Teacher

1 Oct 2021 is my 18th year of service in my current university. 

I am loyal that way, 

or probably too lazy to move elsewhere. 

I have had some offers, but nothing too exciting to make me jump ship (yet).

18 years is a long time in one organisation by anyone's standard. 

On average my mates stay 2-5 years on a job and will move on.

Some do stay & have stayed for more than 20 years: we started working in 1998, and me in 2000 due to the CLP & Bar Exams.

Why have I stayed so long?

Looking in, the main reason is probably because I love teaching.

I would wake up early in the morning or stay up late at night preparing materials, and being self-critical of them, to do justice to my students who join the class at different levels.

Online Learning is a joy to me especially: my work-from-home dream came true and there are many edtech tools that encourage students' participation in many different ways.

Academic management is not too bad either, although given a choice, teaching is multiple times better.

Assessments creation is ok/ satisfactory but marking is the pits. Again, I keep my students in mind and did what I don't really enjoy doing because they deserve to know how they did & should get some feedback to do better in the next assessment. 

There is probably another place of work waiting to hire me in future, but from the looks of it I may stay some more... plus I have the PhD to complete funded by them 😄😏😇