This year marks RMIT's 25th anniversary, my 15th year with the university, and 20 years since I chose a career in teaching. Just a number - but enough to make me feel I ought to write something - for the university, and for the journey.
Back in 2010, when I first joined this community, RMIT Hanoi had just moved to its new campus. Student and staff numbers were growing rapidly. At that time, I wasn’t married yet, and most students still carried books and pens to class.
Five years later, in 2015, my second daughter was born. By then, laptops had become common in class, and RMIT was shifting to a new philosophy of teaching and learning: ‘authentic assessment’. It was not just merely theory-based exams or hypothetical case studies. Assignments now had to connect with real practice. It was tough for both lecturers and students – but in return, students would pour their heart and soul into their assignments, and sometimes as a lecture, I could smile and say, ‘This paper is actually pretty chill’, because they could feel the heart behind it:
‘Did your teammate greet you in the elevator or not?
Contribution Forms digging into who did what?
Was your lecturer kind, or often too sharp?
Did she care for students, or just tear them apart? (ah)
Were you sleep-deprived chasing deadlines all night?
Skipping meals, forgetting to cite? (ay)…’ *
Hoa’s typical class with one industry guest speaker.
In 2020 – my 10th year at RMIT – the Covid-19 pandemic forced lecturers and students worldwide into online learning. The initial difficulties passed, and although we couldn’t meet in person, I received LOLs and smiley faces in class – little signals that warmed my heart during long hours alone in front of the screen.
‘That day, Miss ‘Covid’ breezed in light and free,
Semesters stalled, disruptions everywhere to see.
Then came Patient 17 walking through town,
Orders came: Online learning, starting now!
...
Students logging in, their screens aglow,
I fixed my mic, checked apps, let cameras show.
Sweat dripping as I juggled too many tools,
Praying nothing froze, or all would be a fool.’ *
And now, in 2025, we’re still online – but the new challenge is AI. What should we teach and learn in this era? How do we assess students fairly? Should we lock them in a traditional exam room again, or help them build confidence in themselves? Because the shift has gone from:
‘For all of life’s questions,
Google holds the key’
to
‘For all I already know… still, let me ask AI!’ *
New philosophies, new technologies, new colleagues, new generations of students. From time to time, someone will sigh: ‘Well, that’s what Gen Z is like nowadays’. Or wonder if old sayings like ‘All theory is gray’ still hold true. But in the end, after countless journeys, RMIT’s core remains: passion, imagination and the collective effort of so many people building what RMIT is today.
A panel talk with industry guest speakers in Hoa’s class.
Whatever the era, what matters most is that students here learn for real, do for real, and are assessed for real. And the care between my colleagues and students is always real, too. Whether offline or online, sitting in an exam room or tapping away at a laptop all night, or now, crafting clever AI prompts in the lab – learning is never easy. But the struggle brings growth. And every graduation season, no matter the cohort, the pride is the same: seeing how far our students have come since those first days.
5, 10, 15, 20, or 25 years – for students, graduates and growth rates, these are powerful figures. But for a lecturer, the true joy lies behind the numbers: a former student emailing me, “Miss, I have quit smoking.” (That email has been sitting there for over a decade, still waiting for me to post it on Facebook). Or receiving wedding invitations from couples who first met in my class during group projects. Or letters sharing the news of scholarships won. Or dreams of becoming my colleague one day realised. Of course, alongside joy there is always concern, the empathy shared with each student’s story and each family’s worry, as we search for solutions together.
‘I recall the early days long past
RMIT, modest on Kim Ma street
A few floors tucked beneath green trees
Just dozens of students in the fading light
Life rushed on, the years grew heavier
Now I see why you said what you did
I thought I’d forgotten, long since learned
But pressures now are different, times have turned...
The next generation rises, books in hand
Returning to the same classrooms we once had
Even as AI maps the road ahead
In the end – can it really replace us, my friend?
(And if it’s wrong, what blame is there to send?)’*
*Loosely translated from the original version in Vietnamese, which was inspired by a famous rap song and Vietnamese news/ cultural background.
