Rui Babilonia: A Brief Introduction

Hello everyone, my name is Rui Babilonia. Please call me Ree. My name sounds just like the prefix of re. I am in the graduate certificate program for college and university teaching (GCCUT), and this is one of two classes I am taking. I want to become an online professor, and I thought this program would be a very helpful introduction. I have my Ph.D. in psychology focusing on research health psychology. After I got out of the Marine Corps, I searched for a way to continue serving the military population, which led me to get my Ph.D. My military service started in high school when I signed up for the Army Reserves and entered the delayed entry program.

I attended the University of Pittsburgh for my undergraduate B.S. degree in computer/information science. I left for my second round of boot camp for the Marine Corps twenty-three days after graduating from college. I was older than 3 of my drill instructors, which painted a nice big bright target on me. I spent countless fun times in an area called the quarterdeck and other places such as the sandpit, where all sorts of invigorating physical training activities were done. I found myself back in PA after twenty years of living the transient military lifestyle at the beginning of the pandemic. This is the abridged-abridged version of my adulthood. Now, I will go to my beginning.

Long ago (okay, maybe not that long ago), in a land far, far away, I was born in a town nestled between mountains. I lived in the northern part of China for the first ten years of my life. My parents immigrated to the U.S. to give me the opportunity to live my American dream. In truth, they wanted me to be the proxy for their lost hopes and dreams because they lived through and then had to survive the aftermath of the cultural revolution. As first-generation Chinese immigrants without money or English skills, my parents embodied the tenacity, perseverance, and hardworking characteristics of many immigrants who come to the U.S. My parents also exercised antiquated and oppressive behavioral patterns learned throughout their life in China. Life was interesting living on extreme opposites of a continuum where my school and home lives were night and day. Learning how to stay sane in my forced-by-design polarized life solidified my personality into who I am today.

Some of the hardships my family and I suffered as foreign people in a foreign land have never completely subsided. The perpetual foreigner persona was forced onto me and followed me through a majority of my life experiences. I spent most of my life trying to be accepted by a nondescript group of people within my daily life environments. I am often left feeling like a child with no home, an interloper outside in the cold peering through windows of other people’s warm homes. I will spare you the details of my countless failures and heartaches caused by my perceived helplessness and worthlessness. With that said, the lessons I learned from those experiences are worth their weight in gold, but I do not ever want to relive them again.

I currently use the popular phrase of “forty is the new twenty” as my motto because I get the chance to use what I learned in the last twenty-plus years to begin living a life that is true to me, come what may. I will keep the treasures I have collected throughout my childhood, youth, and adulthood as guidance and reminders of what was and what could be in the future. As we interact within the classroom, I am sure my personality shaped by my heritage, military service, motherhood, and educational background will add to the liveliness of our discussions. Please feel free to ask me anything. I will do my best to answer your questions.