Chalk dust and footprints: A semiotic reflection on vocation, legacy, and becoming

Abstract

In the language of signs, legacies are not inherited; they are enacted. Every morning as I ascend the cinder block steps of the state university where I am currently a teacher, I am not haunted by ghosts, but by shadows—my late father, who walked these very canals as an associate professor, and my aging mother—who etched her quiet defiance into blackboards across public school classrooms for over three decades. I, the unwilling next generation in service, follow in their footsteps with a blend of piety and intransigence, asking myself: What does it mean to teach in a place where your own becoming is buried beneath someone else’s legacy? I teach at the same state university where my father had a role—not simply as an employee, but as someone whose commitment to the university deeply embedded him in its mission. He passed away in 2020, but remnants remain— not in statues or plaques— but in the reflections, from colleagues who knew him for decades, in the institutional habits he institutionalised, and in the knowing glances some people throw at me, seeming to expect to hear imprints of my father's voice within mine.