Love what you do

Love what you do, and do what you love. For me, this is a great formula for a happy life, and also for a successful working life. I sometimes joke that I haven't done a day's work in 20 years. The fact is, I get paid to do what I love to do, which is teaching and research. When I was younger, my careers teacher asked me what I wanted to be when I left school. Without missing a beat I replied: 'I want to be an astronaut.' The teacher wasn't impressed.

I was persuaded that outer space probably wasn't where I was destined to be. I went off and did other things for a while which didn't really satisfy my curiosity. But deep down inside, my mind and my heart were committed to exploration, and I began to learn new skills. Looking back on my journey through various careers, and my current work as a lecturer in a university, I think that in a strange kind of way, I have become the explorer I always wanted to be. I try to find new ways to teach and learn using new and emerging technologies. I experiment with tools and technologies in different contexts. And I write and speak about what I have found. That is what I enjoy doing, and that is what I am committed to do until I get too tired or bored to do it any more.

So here I am, at the National University of Singapore, preparing to give the annual distinguished lecture for a group of research fellows. The title of my talk? My learning journey. I will trace my influences and inspirations and tell the story of how I got to be where I am now. It has been an interesting journey so far, with plenty of twists and turns, some failures and disappointments, and a few surprises. I wonder what questions I will get from my audience? Ultimately, as I continue to navigate my way through this thing called life, learning, occasionally failing, and learning again, I am loving what I am doing, and doing what I love.

Photo by Steve Wheeler


Love what you do by Steve Wheeler was written in Singapore and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.