Dear future Ming,

Today is Sunday January 5, 2025. Tomorrow, you’re about to teach your very first class as a college professor.

The last time I (you) wrote a letter to our future self was in August 2019, right at the beginning of grad school. That letter was written with a clear delivery date in mind – five years down the road, for a version of me who’d not only (hopefully) earned another degree, but also begun to piece together a vision for the future. Writing that letter was incredibly therapeutic. It helped me to bottle up the naïve excitement I felt at the time, a feeling that I’d try to channel during the many inevitably demoralising days of research to follow. And it pushed me to confront my anxiety about whether this was indeed the right path for me, and whether I should’ve listened to that niggling voice in my head that knew I’d always liked teaching more than research. This time, it’s not quite as clear what the delivery date will be. When I go up for tenure? When I retire? Probably not the latter.

There’s a part of me that hasn’t quite processed that tomorrow is actually coming. For as long as I can remember, my dream job was to be a teacher. When I was five years old, after I got home from primary school, I would ‘play teacher’ with my parents, who patiently sat through my makeshift classes, pretending to learn maths and dutifully completing the homework that mini-Ming would assign them. At the time, I didn’t have a fully realised vision for the kind of teacher I wanted to be. When I was in primary school, the dream was to be a primary school teacher. Secondary school came, and I decided I wanted to teach there instead. And then college came and the goalpost shifted again (despite my total cluelessness about what being a professor actually entailed, or the path for getting there). In a way, walking into the classroom tomorrow will feel like the realisation of a lifelong dream I’ve replayed in my mind countless times. By the time you’re reading this letter, you’ll have probably walked into countless more classrooms, and taught hundreds if not thousands of students. But even as this initial excitement wanes, I want you to hear and hold onto just how special today felt.

In many ways, I feel very lucky that each stage of my life has been anchored by this common goal. I’ve benefited from having a clear beacon that gave me purpose and drive, most recently fuelling me through many slogs in grad school. But in recent years, I found myself looking inward with a big dose of skepticism. How can it possibly be that I’ve wanted to do the same thing since I was five years old? Why do I even want to teach to begin with, and I am doing this for “the right reasons”?

If I had to pinpoint why my own teachers mattered so much to me, it would be this story: when I started primary school, we had just moved to Hong Kong, and my English was barely fluent enough to eke by in school. I remember feeling so stressed and self-conscious in those early weeks – I didn’t like being thrust into new spaces, not to mention the extra attention from joining mid-way into the year and needing a translator. But my teachers created a space that was warm, non-judgmental, and provided me the sense of belonging I had desperately craved. As I think about starting tomorrow, I think a lot about the kind of classroom environment I want to create. It’s also why I’m especially excited to teach first-year students. It’s so easy to feel lost during these big life transitions, especially when you’re just one student in a classroom of hundreds. Although I won’t possibly get to know every single one of my students, I hope that I’m still trying, and still creating the kind of warm, affirming classroom space that my own teachers provided for me.

I’m also fully aware that this whole narrative has been romanticized through the lens of hindsight. Indeed, I’ll happily admit that there are also plenty of egotistical reasons I enjoy teaching. Five-year-old me certainly enjoyed the times I was the smartest kid in the room, and adult me still finds no shortage of external validation from being a teacher. Teaching also puts me in spaces over which I have control. Gone is the anxiety of navigating unfamiliar social environments, with unwritten norms that I unwittingly break - now, I get to be the one ‘in charge’ to define the norms that I want. Teachers also hold power – students can come to me with their problems, and for some, I can make those problems magically disappear. For a good while, I sat with these self-centered reasons for wanting to teach. And ultimately, I came to this conclusion: at the end of the day, teaching is still just a job, not a path to sainthood. I can fully embrace all the selfish reasons I enjoy teaching alongside the seemingly altruistic ones; neither has to detract from the other so long as I continue to care authentically for my students.

I know that as I write this, all the frustration that comes with the job exists purely in the abstract. Although even mundane things like preparing a syllabus feel fresh and exciting right now, there will come a day, likely sooner than I expect, when the thought of writing yet another exam will seem like an insurmountably onerous chore. Or when I receive the hundredth request to bump up a grade, and have to remind myself for the hundredth time to respond with empathy and not sass. Heck, you’re probably rolling your eyes now thinking how your 27-year-old self could possibly have been so naïve (yes, you were 27 once).

I’ve also come to accept that my career will always be a big part of my identity, and that’s not an inherently bad thing. I don’t have to pick between loving my job and loving my life outside of work; I can live an equally healthy life by fully embracing both. But I know there is more to my identity than being a teacher. I know that I’m someone who can quickly become obsessive about work, immersing myself so deeply that I withdraw from friends and family. Some of that comes from a fear of disappointing people, of letting my students down. But I hope you remember that it simply isn’t healthy to live in constant fear of letting people down. It’s okay if there are days when I make sacrifices and wing a lecture if it means that I show up for the family Zoom call, or I make it to drinks with that friend I hadn’t seen in months.

I also need to embrace that my identity is malleable. While the past few chapters of my life may have led me to this job, I hope I’ll listen to myself if that path changes. Perhaps I’ll discover that teaching full-time in this role isn’t the right fit for me long-term. Maybe by the time you’re reading this, you’re in a totally different country, with a totally different job. Or maybe you’ll love it here, and you’ll still be at UCSD in forty years’ time. I hope that you’ve at least left yourself open to change, instead of clinging blindly to this “teacher Ming” identity that has defined you for so long.

When I do come back and revisit this letter in years to come, I want to feel proud of the kind of teacher and person I’ve become. I hope that I’ll have inspired my students to live with wonderment and kindness, and I hope that I haven’t let this job encroach on all the other things in my life that nourish me emotionally, creatively, and socially. I still want to be the person who’s making lopsided mugs in the pottery studio or taking on new challenges like learning volleyball and trombone (I hope you’ve gotten back into that), and still being the person who shows up for friends and family. And if you’re reading this and thinking to yourself ‘Hmm, that doesn’t quite sound like me’, know that there’s still time to course correct and make a change.

See you in a couple years,

Your past self,

Ming