Becoming a pseudo-academic faculty?



When I met my friends and tell them I've started working in SMU, their initial response would inevitably be "you're now a lecturer?" or "what are you teaching there?". After I tell them what I really did, they would go "oh" and then next question would then be "have you considered teaching or become a lecturer"?"

Well, I've thought about it and have explored but the unfortunate reality is that it takes an awful long time to get a doctorate and embark on an academic career (to become faculty and get tenure), so my "shelf-life" in the university's perspective would be fairly short before retirement.

However, there is another route that I could use to become a "pseudo-academic" faculty member, which is to write and publish papers. Not for the aim of becoming a true faculty, but to share what I've learnt since I started working to the academic world.

From what I gathered, writing papers is not for the faint-hearted, it requires a fair amount of time to conduct research, write them and look for a suitable publishing agency to accept the paper.

Considering that I have quite a fair bit of experience in the areas of strategic planning, project management, change management, futures and foresight, there should be some scope and a suitable niche that I can find interesting stuff to write about.

No harm trying right?

In moments like this



After having joined SMU for a while, I discovered that I had a direct bus that could bring me from my home to  my office :)

And as it started service near my place, l could also get a seat for my entire trip there. This meant that I have, on average, 45 minutes of personal time every weekday.

Considering that I'm not the kind that sleeps on the bus, even though I could, I'm exploring how I can use this time most efficiently.