How to get by with your new lecturing Job (For those who are lecturing for survival)

One of the main traits of being a good lecturer is having the confidence, good academic papers, several other things, and the ability to make students pass. Usually, when you are a lecturer, students assume that you know way too much than they could ever understand.  This is true for some but for most not really. Some people take on lecturing jobs just to survive this harsh economy.

Now I am going to give you some tips on how to get by in this profession (for those that are just lecturing for survival) . These are a collection of teaching methods that I have been witness to. And if you are lucky to have several students like me; you will earn the title,  'Best Lecturer For Life (BLFL).'

1. Choose your university carefully.  I can not speak for many universities, but the best one for you because I have been there is Makerere University Kampala. This one comes with the prestige of being among the top 10 universities in Africa so that's already a bragging point when you are introducing yourself as a lecturer. Also it has high cut off points so definately this implies most of the students catch on really fast during class sessions. You don't have to stress so much.

2. Surely, you are a novice without passion in this profession. Where you do not understand what you are teaching, assure your students that the topic is self explanatory and move on.

3. Encourage students to ask questions and then give them those questions as their coursework or even start up a debate and encourage students to give opinions to the questions that have been asked. Then move out and reply your WhatsApp chats also don't forget to update your Facebook status, take a selfie for instagram then move on to the coffee shop. Come back to close the lecture.

4. Why even go to class in the first place?
All you need is to show up at your office, sign in the attendance book, knock shoulders with fellow lecturers but don't be rough, your shoulder bones could get hurt! Share some gossip and laugh with them (that is you creating evidence), mention that you have a class to attend and be a no show until the next day. You prolly have friends meeting for coffee at that time, join them already.

5. Okay bambi you may kinda feel guilty about not going to class for a whole semester. How heartless can you be? So then, go to class in the third week since the semester commenced, with copies of the course outline and distribute them to all students.  Even if you don't ever appear in class, at least the students will always remember how generous you were as to use your own resources to get them copies of the outline, many lecturers don't to that, instead they will always complain to the class how they earn peanuts blah blah. 
Wamma go ahead and discuss the course outline then tell them the date of the test.

6. Since you want to be even nicer than the lecturers who do number five exactly the way it is, at least you have a good heart and can compile several handouts in line with the course outline, bind them into a pamphlet and leave it a Juma's photocopier (whom you made a deal with to give you 25% of every pamphlet bought).

7. Do not forget to always check in at office, remember those logs will give you away.

8. A good lecturer is judged by the students results at the end of the semester. So to make sure that your students perform well, print for them guiding questions to give them an idea of how questions are set. Assure them that these are only guiding questions and that the exam will be totally different so that they can expand their reading areas. This is where you encourage them to use the insitution library or employ technology in search for the appropriate approaches to the questions. Be assistive as to suggest Google search, LinkedIn, academia.edu, instagram or any other academia sites that can be helpful.

9. Set the exact guiding questions for both the test and exam. Shock them!

10. Marking can't be all that hard now can it? If you have been an absentee like this, the least you can do is mark the damn exam scripts.