My Life as a Professor

The last six months have been able to live one of the most amazing experiences in my life. During my whole life I have set many goals, some of those are insignificant, others require more work to achieve them, and others are a sort of bucket list of things I have to do before leaving this world.

Today, maybe in my last week as a University professor, and Teachers' Day in my country I would like to talk about my experience as a professor.

The Goal

Among the aspirations I talked in the introduction, becoming a professor held a special place in my heart. Teaching others is one of my many passions. When I received the opportunity to become a professor by July of last year, I couldn't help but just accept and live the dream, reach one of my goals.

The years of preparation and dedication had led me to that moment, and I was determined to seize the opportunity with open arms.

Decision

I almost sure all of you think it was a no brainer decision. It was my dream, so I just had to step into the position with no hesitation. But, if we zoom into the situation I think this was a brave decision.

The company I worked for had recently gone bankrupt, unemployed I was looking for other gigs, and interesting opportunities knocked on my door on the condition that I remain exclusive to their companies and temporarily left my dream of becoming a professor aside.

To follow my dream I had to turn down tempting offers. I am a quite passionate man. I had to say NO to things I loved, just because the satisfaction of fulfilling a dream I was sure would be incredibly superior to any other job.

Beginning

The time passed and I started with lectures, engaging activities, and captivating  projects. With an small group of students I filled countess slides and thousands of lines of code with my love, motivation, and hopes. I genuinely believed that through my efforts, I would be able to not only impart knowledge about the subject I was teaching but also inspire these young minds to navigate through the intricacies of life itself.

A few weeks later, I understood it was not possible. There was a considerable number of students with no interest in the subject at all. I tried a lot of things. Tried to create awesome programs like videogames or music players, and had few attempts to involve them in the class by using tools like Live Share. It was not enough.

Administrative Hell

At the same time I was starting my journey as professor, I started seeing the administrative hell I was involved. In site meetings almost every week, request of weird documents almost every month, slow operations - some of them had not been resolved after six months - and a huge, incredible enormous bureaucratic machine in which reaching to the appropriate instance is almost impossible and almost no one inside knows how it works or how to contact a particular entity.

Reality

After a semester of work, I was faced with a strong reality. Although many are paying a fortune to attend classes, very few have real interest in the subject. It has been disappointing, but I have learned to deal with it.

The motivation didn't stop. I continued creating awesome projects and even I created an Online IDE named StepCode for the few people who were interested in the subject.

The New Decision

Now we are here, in my probably last week. I do not regret anything. It was an amazing experience and I would like to continue, but perhaps in other place.

Teach people is wonderful, you start talking with a lot of people, share you knowledge with people who want it, and become a reference in the area for others. But you can teach anywhere anytime, you just need knowledge, time, and desire. And a college may not be the best place to do it.

I will not discard the possibility of teaching on a university again, but for now I think I can help more people using other resources. We are on the digital age, where everyone can connect everybody just with a couple of clicks or touches in a screen.

I think I'll go that way. I started a course of programming fundamentals in this blog with posts every Wednesday. But I won't stop there. Maybe online courses, or perhaps becoming an instructor in a modern platform. But I'm sure I'll follow my passion and will continue to try to share my knowledge with everyone.

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