For some reason I don’t always find time to tell my students the entire story why I become a professor. Here I am. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I didn’t grow up dreaming to be one. I thought about being a lawyer (when I was 10); then I thought about being a therapist\/psychologist (when I was 15)…but then, after my first semester of computing classes in high school, it started giving the idea, perhaps, I could\/should be “a computing teacher”. Part of it was practical reason, I knew if I wasn’t successfully getting the education credits as a trained teacher, I can work in industry, if I continued pursuing the computing related field, which I did. During my freshman and sophomore years, it became more evident that I would most likely find a software-engineering job after my college degree (There’s huge demand, and I have the skills and degree). It also just seemed like the very next thing to do, because all my peers were doing so (preparing for graduate school or software-engineering job). I didn’t spend any extra minutes to ponder, what do I really want?<\/span><\/em> (Am I going to like software engineering at all? What exactly is a career and life style?) Although, at the back of my mind, I had always questioned myself, <\/em>why do everyone want to go to graduate school?<\/em> <\/span>why not go to work and become financial independent? I had the questions about why should I do everyone is doing?<\/span> <\/em>I wanted something different! I wanted to figure it out. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I stumped upon a flyer on campus “International Exchange Program”. That absolutely intrigued me!!! I didn’t have to come up with an answer of going to graduate school or finding a software engineering job. I can “WORK” out a solution that I, myself, fully invested, on exploring potential options and opportunities. At the moment, I was thinking, “it is not that I never thought of studying abroad, it is very expensive to do so, can I (my family) afford it?” the exchange program just seemed like an opportunity to me. It may be my once a life time studying abroad chance, by paying local tuition and receiving foreign education. I may have no other chances to study abroad. This is it!!! So, I took TOEFL (twice, to improve the scores); I watched a lot of Friends…and I applied for the exchange program. I got 3 admissions (Boston U, U of Australia, and ESSCA at Budapest). <\/p>\n\n\n\n I have heard of only the first 2, never heard of ESSCA at all! And that’s where I went! ESSCA stands for \u00c9cole sup\u00e9rieure des sciences commerciales d’Angers. It is a French business school offers English programs in multiple campuses. I chose to go there not really because for the sake of the adventure. It fits my reality agenda to graduate on time. Plus, I consulted one of my professors that I have tremendous respect for, I asked, which one should I choose? He said, just for a semester, of course, ESSCA! Go to Europe, have fun and enjoy! Off I go~<\/p>\n\n\n\n After that half year (a semester of exchange program in Budapest, Hungary and a month of backpacking in Europe), it completely changed my life. <\/p>\n\n\n\n To be continued…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Graduate school or Software Engineering job? For some reason I don’t always find time to tell my students the entire story why I become a professor. Here I am. I didn’t grow up dreaming to be one. I thought about being a lawyer (when I was 10); then I thought about being a therapist\/psychologist (when… Continue reading Why I do what I do – part I<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3145,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"qubely_global_settings":"","qubely_interactions":"","kk_blocks_editor_width":"","_kiokenblocks_attr":"","_kiokenblocks_dimensions":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-journey","entry"],"gutentor_comment":0,"qubely_featured_image_url":null,"qubely_author":{"display_name":"DrHsiao","author_link":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/anystudyprerequisite\/author\/ihsiao\/"},"qubely_comment":0,"qubely_category":"Journey<\/a>","qubely_excerpt":"Graduate school or Software Engineering job? For some reason I don’t always find time to tell my students the entire story why I become a professor. Here I am. I didn’t grow up dreaming to be one. I thought about being a lawyer (when I was 10); then I thought about being a therapist\/psychologist (when……","post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/anystudyprerequisite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/anystudyprerequisite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/anystudyprerequisite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/anystudyprerequisite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3145"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/anystudyprerequisite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/anystudyprerequisite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/anystudyprerequisite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19\/revisions\/26"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/anystudyprerequisite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/anystudyprerequisite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/anystudyprerequisite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}