Balancing Teaching and Research: Insights from a High School and University Educator (Full Transcript)

Speaker 1: My name is Amit, A-M-I-T, and that's B-A-S-U. I just said my name. I teach biology here in the high school. I also teach biochemistry in Drexel University to mostly the pre-med students, bio-med students, and also the engineering students here. That was the weird class there, which has both engineers and potential doctors. So I teach in both places, both in the high school and also in Drexel University. What were the big lessons that you had to take from being in this profession? A major, major thing is that I had to learn how to work with young people. That's one of the things. In the research, you don't have to interface much with other people. You can do whatever you really want to do, as long as somebody is funding it. Whereas in the teaching profession, you need to interact with others quite a bit. So you need to be really, really, not only that. In both cases, you need to be humble. That's not the question. The question is that can you interact and stay level-headed with others, especially very young people. Do you feel like you made a good choice going to the school, the college that you picked, the university? I didn't have much of a choice there. That's the worst part of the whole story. I didn't have much of a choice. I had other choices, but I could not have the options. That's why I keep telling people that whenever you are trying to do something, you need to make sure of your finances. Any student from the college, they come and ask me that I'm going to go from here to the undergrad. My undergrad students are more or less, okay, from there, go to the medical field straight. That's the art. They go for the job. Otherwise, when they try to enter the research field, I always send them back and tell them, go back to your family and ask them that can they support you. Not financially, but the problem comes that they should not expect a lot of support from you while you are in the research field. You are in the research. That's where you are working. If your family expects that you are going to fund them, you are going to support them, you are going to be always there to take care of them, then that is not a researcher. You can't do it. I always wanted to teach. That has never been a question. It was a difference between whether I wanted to teach full-time and do some research, or I'll do the research full-time and do some teaching. Ultimately, I figured out that the way the U.S. education is structured, if I go for the research, especially coming from a different country, I'll be extremely handicapped. In terms of finances, because of finances, it has always been a problem with my elders. I just thought that it would be a lot more straightforward for me if I teach and then also do my research. For more information, visit www.fema.gov