Supervisors

Half a year ago, I got to know that my thesis supervisor will retire very soon. It means that I will have a new supervisor. At that time, my feeling was mixed. If you survey all doctoral students, nobody will tell you that they want to change supervisor unless something wrong happens between the tutors and tutees.

To be honest, I respect my current supervisor very much as we have known each other for more than ten years. We met each other when I took his PGDE class. Since then, he became supervisor of my master thesis and doctoral thesis. He taught me a lot of modules over these ten years' time such as written discourse, teaching of reading and writing and research methodologies. He always gave me a lot of inspiring ideas on teaching and research. Though he looks very cool and scholastic, I reckon he is a warm and good-hearted gentleman deep inside him. I think I am going to miss him. I remember he gave me a lot of support when I was struggling in the first year of my doctoral study. I was in and out hospital for a few times and changed jobs during my first year of study but he gave me a lot of support and helped me go through my most 'critical' time.

As for my new supervisor, he is a friend of mine. Initially and even now, I treat him like my idol. We met each other almost four years ago. Since I like his teaching approach very much, I was enrolled in the five courses he taught and of course, I learnt a great deal from him. As time goes by, he treated me like his friend. We always had lunch, dinner, tea and chatted for a few hours every time. Sometimes, he will call me to see what I am doing and how well I am. We talked about our work, families and everything. He is an extremely intelligent person like most of the academics in Hong Kong. What I like him most is that he is straightforward and honest. Whenever I want to do something he deems inappropriate, he will point it out right away and advise me to do in other way round. It's hard to have a critical friend or 'supervisor' like him. You know, we tend to be polite in order not to offend others, but he won't. I appreciate this kind of character very much.

No doubt, these two gentlemen do influence my career life very much and I respect both of them.