I am an American academic, retired from Shizuoka University.  I joined the Faculty of Informatics at its founding in October, 1995.  Interestingly, the original name of the faculty was The Faculty of Information.  I really didn't like the change, because it seemed to me that "informatics" are information products made by academics equipped with digital tools and analytic frames and models that do not at all contain what I need in my world.
   I need my personal history, family, and all of my educational experiences, into which were wrapped my childhood and all the books I read before I began to find my way in the world of literature.  You see, I got my PhD in Comparative Literature at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville.  While it was cleanly called Comparative Literature when I got the degree, the program became Comparative Literature and Culture, which seems a bit more accurate.
My father took us to Honolulu in 1967 when I was 13.  I came to Nagasaki, Japan for the first time in 1980, with my husband.  My grandfather on my mother's side graduated from Kings College, Cambridge with a classical tripos.  His tutor was Sir John Tressider Sheppard, an eminent classicist.  My younger brother and I were infected with the dream of the university. Oxford, Cambridge - higher learning! 
I was hired with my newly minted doctorate to teach English Conversation to Freshmen at Shizuoka University.  The professors involved in setting up the curriculum and course of study for the three programs called the class I taught "Communication Skills."  The class was required for graduation at this university.  I was eventually promoted to Professor of Communication.  
I had fallen in love with Gregory Bateson at some point, let's say around 1985, when I first read MIND AND NATURE: A NECESSARY UNITY.  In Y2K, the year I was elected to full professor, I initiated my GENERAL SYSTEMS THEORY COMMUNICATION PROJECT.  I sponsored and supported STUDENT MANAGED EVENTS both summer and Christmas for 20 years.  For me, it was essential that students elected their leader, and the leader appointed team leaders.  "To sponsor and support.  And we would learn the ways of the world!"