To be or not to be

Going into teaching was a pretty big thing. To give up design to teach was more or less an incredulous joke to my design peers and my professors started having this funny turn up of the nose when they heard about the fate of one of their so-called... better students.

I guess people choose different paths depending on what their own goals in life are; regardless of social norms. Perhaps I am indeed throwing my future away because its almost like joining the monastery and I can no longer have the glorified high-flying life of a designer, giving up the rat race and the thrills of the corporate lifestyle for the safe civil servant's life.

Well, I have my own plans. And doing this is a step towards what I want and hope to achieve. Its hard for me to explain the big picture now, but according to my capabilities and strengths, I make the most of it this way. Really. Trust me on this.

So there is a purpose why I need to have a blog here:
Its almost something like joining the Alcoholics Annonymous (AA) as I need to reflect on

• what I already KNOW about this week's topic,


• what I WANT to learn,


• what I LEARNED this week and


• what QUESTIONS I still have.
  

On that note, I feel somewhat of a need to use this opportunity to reject previous assumptions on design teachers (or just the teaching profession in Singapore in general):

Well, I LEARNED that there ARE relevant opportunities in design and technology and that what teachers are now equipped with do meet real world standards.

Its rather difficult to have QUESTIONS at this stage as its during the course that the questions get answered. But in general, I feel that I will have the constant question of relevance. How and why is this or that technology or method relevant (eg. too much effort + too little outcome = poor efficiency). How to take something and re-evolve it into your own tool. Such questions are purely rhetorical as its pretty much up to yourself how to figure that out...