Professor now

In India you get appointed as lecturer first, and then you become reader and years later appointed as a professor. In the United States, everyone who teaches at the college level can be called professor.

Teaching is a very difficult profession and I never imagined myself doing that but when an opportunity presented itself I thought why not give it a try and have this experience in life as well. I always dreaded teaching, standing in front of people and talking so I was surprised that I wanted to do this.

In December I was given the task of teaching ‘Introduction to Bioinformatics’ class in a local community college. This is the first time they are offering this class so there is no coursework they had developed, so I spent lot of time trying to come up with content for this class. Because of lack of time and vastness of this subject I had settled in for ‘Bioinformatics for Dummies’ book and my lectures are guided by that book.

Anyway, it has been four classes so far and I can’t say that I enjoy it. It is lot of work preparing for lectures, and thinking what assignments and quizzes you want to have. I do like the process of teaching and transferring my learning to other souls so in that respect it is very fulfilling role.