The PhD starts and no turning back

I often get asked by students and others "where are you from?" I feel quite uneasy when I get asked this question, as my friend puts it, it's a tricky question! Mainly because, I rarely feel that I do justice to Togo in my attempts to describe my country and my culture. The description invariably falls short of providing a picture which depict it's richness and variety. Most of the time I find my self struggling to escape the stereotypes about Africa. However the question also helps me reflect on my own stereotypical views about other countries as well. A few people actually knew Togo, which I admit is somewhat comforting. Most of the inquirers would be happy with a merly Geographically locating the country for instance the fact that Togo is neighboring country to Ghana which I found to be much better known.

For a newly arriving graduate student the most pressing issues are that of housing and food infrastructure. I also have 5 year old daughter who happen to also be starting school this year. Quite interestingly the coincidence of my daughter starting kindergarten as I start my PhD has been source of many reflexions. For instance the fact she was starting a very long educative journey that would shape her and her views of he world. It strikes me that we are required some 20 years to catch up with the accumulated Human knowledge, and kids don't even realize it.

Perhaps my most insightful realization is the fact that the education system has to be community orriented there is no way that parent could bare alone the responsibilities of providing the intricate and elaborate education needed by kids today. So it seems that very young age and very old age are the two periods of human live where our vulnerability really shows the importance and the relative strength of a community versus the relative powerlessness of individualism. This observation played a crucial role in shifting my position on individualism.

3 weeks of classes went by. Already, I struggle to advance my research agenda as well as my classes. I have to admit that I can not help but feel that these two tasks sometimes seem to be somewhat conflictive. It was already brought to my attention that faculty members sometimes considered classes as a burden distracting them from their research especially in light of the fact that faculty members are mostly being judged on their research contributions not so much by their teaching. It never occurred to me before graduate school, that graduate student go through similar struggles. I am still trying to find the right balance between these two aspects of education.



The First Social event I participated to in the Computer Science Department was Meet 'n' Greet it was a wonderful event that got us to know other graduate student and literally broke the Ice among the participant.