Dec 19, 2021 3 min read Education

Education Is One Of The Building Blocks For Success

Education has always played a critical role in everyone's lives. From the moment we're born we are continuously learning and as we grow older, we do our best to pass on the knowledge to others. I've always believed in being able to learn from everyone you meet, regardless of age or societal status. There is genuinely always something that you can learn from every interaction with an individual.

Salut Muhidin has always believed in the principle of "Following the path" where if you have the patience and are able to take initiative of your life, you will eventually end up where you want to go. Salut has been a Senior Lecturer at Macquarie University for over 11 years and focuses on applied demography, particularly on population mobility, business analytics, health issues and its consequences in different settings: including Asia (Indonesia), West Africa (Burkina Faso and Ghana) and Australia.

I've have the opportunity to work with Salut as a guest lecturer for his International Business classes but this was the first time that I've actually gotten to sit down and have a proper conversation with him. It was extremely inspiring hearing about the amount of work that actually goes behind each lesson and the passion to continuous grow. So I thought I'd share my insights from my interaction with him so that hopefully everyone else will be able to gain something from it too.

Day in a life of a Lecturer

I was really surprised to hear but being a lecturer is almost the same as being a consultant where the actual class is like a workshop. As a lecturer, Salut works on a weekly schedule where he plans and revises the content the week before to ensure that he is able to provide the students with valuable content. As you will probably know already, there are always busy and quiet periods within a semester (e.g. exam periods) so as Salut puts it, being a lecturer is a very privileged position to be in as you have your own freedom in deciding what you do with your time.

Now this doesn't mean that he goes and watches Netflix during his down time, there is actually a lot more work which needs to be done. As a lecturer it is extremely important to stay on top of the curriculum and the latest updates on the topic so that the content remains relevant to the students. On top of this, they are also scouting to find potential students who would be offered to help with their research.

Finally, like all jobs, it is important to stay connected with others and attend networking events. This isn't to leverage your relationship with others, but it is more to be aware of what's happening within the industry and to learn from others. As technology becomes embedded in our lives, they are actually encouraged to post on professional social media platforms like Linkedin to broaden their network.

How to become a lecturer

So you might be wondering, this sounds like an awesome career to be in, but how does someone like me become a lecturer?

There are 3 critical things that are required in order to be successful in this career and these are:

You must have a University Degree. I know this sounds obvious but the main point of this is that you must have a degree in a similar field or industry in which you would like to teach.
You should have a publication or peer review. As I've mentioned in my earlier posts, being able to show your work is going to be the future of getting a job. A CV is the past and it is being replaced with having a portfolio to show. As we've all heard before, "Show Don't Tell"
References from peers or students from tutoring. On top of showing your work, it is important that there are individuals who can vouch for you. If what you're saying about yourself is true, it should resonate with others as well and wouldn't require you to prove it.

I hope you found this blog post insightful and was able to learn something from it. If you want to know more about what being a lecturer is like or get into the education industry, feel free to reach out to me through the contact page and I'll get back to you as soon as I can. Also, feel free to subscribe to the blog so that you get notifications on the latest content.