Last summer was intense--I presented at a conference in Italy. We drove across the country for a wedding. I taught an intensive Shakespeare course for gifted junior high students. In one week, I went through seven time zones. All this while reading for exams, which I started the week before school started in the fall.
I swore this summer would be different. And yes, I'm staying in the country, and I'm teaching here. Today, however, I was trying to figure out when to schedule my trip to Duke to do research in the archives there, and realize that I don't have a lot of weeks free. My best bet is to go the week before I go to the Dickens Universe, because I know that that week will be exhausting, and when I get back, there's only two weeks until school starts. Before that, I'm teaching for five weeks, I'm presenting at the Southern Writers/Southern Writing conference (finally! I'll get to go to Oxford!), and this week I'm leaving for a week and a half to do a grand tour of friends and family, hitting Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Ohio.
Plus, you know, dissertation writing and job market preparation. Is this just some perverse quirk of mine, that I can't stay still? I would say that I can't say no, but I've said no quite a few times lately. After having been president of the WGS grad student association this year, I switched positions with the VP for next year. And I don't have any position in the English grad student association. For my summer class--which is an intensive introduction to fiction which meets five days a week for five weeks--I just cut a whole novel and two short stories from my original plan. Surely, this is progress?
It's not as though I'd want to say no to any of the things I'm doing this summer. I'm hoping to think of them as rewards along the way to keep me writing and working on my bigger projects (ie, dissertation and job docs). That, at least, is my plan for now. Stay tuned to see how it actually pans out.
(However, I will observe that last summer, though I was tired, was quite a success. I did accomplish all that I set out to do--so perhaps I should recognize that the more I do, the more I'm able to do, generally. So perhaps I should focus less on how daunting the summer seems, and instead focus on how much fun it promises to be.)
Showing posts with label graduate school. Show all posts
Showing posts with label graduate school. Show all posts
Monday, May 20, 2013
Monday, January 21, 2013
Throwing like a girl, communicating like a graduate student
I have a hazy idea of what I want to say here--there's something which is irking me, but I can't quite articulate it. And I feel like I've sort of been part of the problem myself. So bear with me.
As the professionalization chair of the English grad student organization this year, I'm trying to organize some professionalization workshops for grad students this semester. Publishing is one of our students' biggest concerns, and I'm going to ask a faculty member if he would do a repeat of a well-received workshop he did a few years ago, about what makes a journal article appear "grad student-y." I'm not sure exactly what he covers in it, but I heard good things about it.
I've also asked the DGS to do a workshop on professional communication and networking. There are two big things I'd like her to cover. One, I'd like her to talk about things like, how to strike up a conversation at a conference/other networky place with a total stranger. Or how to talk to a scholar you admire without sounding like a total fangirl.* The other thing is more basic things, like that many faculty members take offense if you call them by their first name, or many of the other habits--especially in email--that I've heard faculty members complain about.
However, something's been irking me about a thread that's running through these requests, and I realize that it has something to do with the idea that we need to learn to not sound like graduate students. It occurs to me that when most academics use the phrase "like a graduate student," they generally don't mean it as a compliment.** And perhaps that doesn't bug most people, but there's something that smacks of other observations like, "You throw like a girl!" When I first heard that one, my first response was, well, yeah, I am a girl. Oh, you mean that as an insult?
And I suppose what I'm feeling right now is something like, well, yeah, I am a graduate student. And I'm kind of getting tired of that label being used as a negative. When I was trying to articulate this to my husband, he observed that that's kind of the problem with a hierarchical system such as academia, that those lower down on the learning curve do make mistakes and bumble things which those more experienced generally make less often. And to be frank, I am aware enough of my own place on the learning curve/food chain, and my own ignorance of the often complicated, not-quite-visible politics going on--as well as the countless examples I've seen of other graduate students stumbling in their attempts to seem professional or assertive--that I understand why the term so often used as an adjective to mean unprofessional or ignorant of the big picture.
So, should I just suck it up and stop taking things so personally? Or is there a conversation to be had about the derogatory and pejorative uses of the phrase "grad student"?
*Seriously, I worry sometimes about turning into Chris Farley: "You that time when you wrote Dirt and Desire? You know, and you asked, like, what would happen if we replaced William Faulkner with Eudora Welty at the center of the southern canon? That was awesome!"
**At a conference recently, I was stopped by a total stranger who congratulated me on giving a good conference paper presentation, and when they discovered I was a grad student, continued their compliments with, "Wow, you don't present like a grad student at all!"
As the professionalization chair of the English grad student organization this year, I'm trying to organize some professionalization workshops for grad students this semester. Publishing is one of our students' biggest concerns, and I'm going to ask a faculty member if he would do a repeat of a well-received workshop he did a few years ago, about what makes a journal article appear "grad student-y." I'm not sure exactly what he covers in it, but I heard good things about it.
I've also asked the DGS to do a workshop on professional communication and networking. There are two big things I'd like her to cover. One, I'd like her to talk about things like, how to strike up a conversation at a conference/other networky place with a total stranger. Or how to talk to a scholar you admire without sounding like a total fangirl.* The other thing is more basic things, like that many faculty members take offense if you call them by their first name, or many of the other habits--especially in email--that I've heard faculty members complain about.
However, something's been irking me about a thread that's running through these requests, and I realize that it has something to do with the idea that we need to learn to not sound like graduate students. It occurs to me that when most academics use the phrase "like a graduate student," they generally don't mean it as a compliment.** And perhaps that doesn't bug most people, but there's something that smacks of other observations like, "You throw like a girl!" When I first heard that one, my first response was, well, yeah, I am a girl. Oh, you mean that as an insult?
And I suppose what I'm feeling right now is something like, well, yeah, I am a graduate student. And I'm kind of getting tired of that label being used as a negative. When I was trying to articulate this to my husband, he observed that that's kind of the problem with a hierarchical system such as academia, that those lower down on the learning curve do make mistakes and bumble things which those more experienced generally make less often. And to be frank, I am aware enough of my own place on the learning curve/food chain, and my own ignorance of the often complicated, not-quite-visible politics going on--as well as the countless examples I've seen of other graduate students stumbling in their attempts to seem professional or assertive--that I understand why the term so often used as an adjective to mean unprofessional or ignorant of the big picture.
So, should I just suck it up and stop taking things so personally? Or is there a conversation to be had about the derogatory and pejorative uses of the phrase "grad student"?
*Seriously, I worry sometimes about turning into Chris Farley: "You that time when you wrote Dirt and Desire? You know, and you asked, like, what would happen if we replaced William Faulkner with Eudora Welty at the center of the southern canon? That was awesome!"
**At a conference recently, I was stopped by a total stranger who congratulated me on giving a good conference paper presentation, and when they discovered I was a grad student, continued their compliments with, "Wow, you don't present like a grad student at all!"
Sunday, September 30, 2012
Grad school's not baseball--there's plenty of crying
Several times over the past few days, I have owned up to just how much crying I've done while in grad school about grad school. It's strange, isn't it, how much crying we do here? Or is it more that there's plenty of crying in "real life," but graduate school can be so all-consuming that most things that I would cry about end up somehow related to school now.
I think part of it--a part that I'd like to figure out a way around--is the sense of pressure, the sense of a clock ticking and you have to be teaching and grading and doing coursework/studying for exams/writing the diss while still keeping current on scholarship/writing conference papers/publishing articles/working on the job docs/networking. With the clock ticking. And people not in graduate school thinking that you just spend your days writing on blackboards and reading in your pajamas.
I guess the thing is, I've cried because of the stress and strain of other jobs. I'm trying to figure out why grad school seems different. Perhaps it's partly because in other jobs, people bitch about all of the parts of their lives; in graduate school, we bitch about graduate school. Teaching, teaching assignments, conspiracy theories about teaching assignments, job docs, student emails, conspiracy theories about the job market, what a prospectus is supposed to be, conspiracy theories about committees...While on the one hand, I've thought that the answer to a lot of this stress is more of a sense of academic community and department engagement, I'm wondering if there's a risk of too much conspiratorial energy accumulating with too much community, or if the lack of community leads to such thinking.
What I'd like to do is to feel okay with the clock ticking, realize that it's going to tick whether I'm in grad school or not, whether I go to jazzercise or read a journal article. Whether I do another revision or not. And at any moment, I can go and get a job as a secretary, an adjunct teacher, even a women's center director. And readers' reviews are that way because it's the convention, not because I'm actually stupid.
So, what's a healthy attitude toward graduate school? Or is there one? Is it simply an unhealthy situation?
I think part of it--a part that I'd like to figure out a way around--is the sense of pressure, the sense of a clock ticking and you have to be teaching and grading and doing coursework/studying for exams/writing the diss while still keeping current on scholarship/writing conference papers/publishing articles/working on the job docs/networking. With the clock ticking. And people not in graduate school thinking that you just spend your days writing on blackboards and reading in your pajamas.
I guess the thing is, I've cried because of the stress and strain of other jobs. I'm trying to figure out why grad school seems different. Perhaps it's partly because in other jobs, people bitch about all of the parts of their lives; in graduate school, we bitch about graduate school. Teaching, teaching assignments, conspiracy theories about teaching assignments, job docs, student emails, conspiracy theories about the job market, what a prospectus is supposed to be, conspiracy theories about committees...While on the one hand, I've thought that the answer to a lot of this stress is more of a sense of academic community and department engagement, I'm wondering if there's a risk of too much conspiratorial energy accumulating with too much community, or if the lack of community leads to such thinking.
What I'd like to do is to feel okay with the clock ticking, realize that it's going to tick whether I'm in grad school or not, whether I go to jazzercise or read a journal article. Whether I do another revision or not. And at any moment, I can go and get a job as a secretary, an adjunct teacher, even a women's center director. And readers' reviews are that way because it's the convention, not because I'm actually stupid.
So, what's a healthy attitude toward graduate school? Or is there one? Is it simply an unhealthy situation?
Friday, May 11, 2012
More end of semester thoughts
I finished grading papers at 1am this morning, and posted grades to Moodle and submitted final grades. By 2:30am, I had my first email which begged, "But I tried really hard!" The past two or three days I've had a number of frantic emails from students--one even used the word frantic--wanting to know when grades would be posted, can they revise, is there any extra credit they can do....Several of them began by explaining that they had just looked at their grade on Moodle and realized that they didn't have an A, which prompted the frantic emails. And since posting grades this morning, the emails have continued.
It's weird--I used to get these emails, before I started using an online gradebook. Once I started keeping grades online, these emails for the most part went away, as students are able to check on their average at any given moment. I even had one student write his position paper this semester arguing that all teachers should be required to use the Moodle gradebook, as it greatly alleviates student anxiety. So, this rash of frantic emails is rather unusual.
I admit to feeling quite frustrated and annoyed by these emails, as most of them are using emotional language and all seem to be throwing themselves on my mercy. They beg for extra credit and even offer to write a new paper. My annoyance stems from the fact that it's not as though these students' grades suddenly took a nosedive, or that there were lots of failing grades. In fact, one of the most desperate sounding emails is from a student who got a B. I checked final grades against midterm grades, and individual final paper grades against earlier paper grades. Generally, there's a slight progression from midterm to final, and most individuals show improvement from earlier papers to later (which is why the final paper is weighted heavier than the first paper--I genuinely work to structure the class so that improvement is rewarded). I had some really great student papers--one paper, in which a student explained Jindal's position on school vouchers, and then explained how his explanation is oversimplifying a complicated issue, got me to clap at my computer while I was reading it.
Today, however, between my frantic student emails which all seem to be hurling themselves at my mercy (as I noted on facebook, my mercy is tired of having things thrown at it today) and the conversations I've had the last two days about teaching--specifically, my program's stated expectations of its teachers, what kind of teaching seems to be rewarded by my program, the program's unclear expectations of us as graduate students, and what our students seem to expect from us--I'm throwing my hands up today. The person who won the teaching award did so because he received straight 5s on his teaching evaluations--which seems suspect to me. "5" doesn't mean anything to me. When I hand out evals, I give the school's scantron forms, but I also hand out my own, short answer forms (based on those used by my former program), which actually give me useful information. Further, there is very little classroom observation that goes on--both times that I've been observed here, I've had to ask to be evaluated. I don't think that very much is known about what goes on inside the classroom here.
Because of this (I conclude), my colleagues and I are getting students who have been here for two and three and four years who claim to have never done academic research in a classroom. There are graduate students in my graduate classes who claim to have never written a paper longer than ten pages, and don't know how to write something 20 pages long.
I feel like I keep encountering issues which seem like they're connected, and seem like they are systemic in some way. I would like to be able to do something about it, but I also want to maintain my sanity and use my finite amounts of energy and time in ways which reflect my priorities. My purpose in writing this is to vent, with the intention of blowing off steam to maintain my sanity. Next year, I will have some leadership opportunities in my department to at least offer support for graduate students who feel as though they're floundering when writing, and I intend to once again re-formulate a first year composition class. Now that grades are submitted, I think the next thing for me to do is rest and recuperate. I tend to have less patience when I'm fatigued, which is definitely contributing to today's frustration and annoyance.
It's weird--I used to get these emails, before I started using an online gradebook. Once I started keeping grades online, these emails for the most part went away, as students are able to check on their average at any given moment. I even had one student write his position paper this semester arguing that all teachers should be required to use the Moodle gradebook, as it greatly alleviates student anxiety. So, this rash of frantic emails is rather unusual.
I admit to feeling quite frustrated and annoyed by these emails, as most of them are using emotional language and all seem to be throwing themselves on my mercy. They beg for extra credit and even offer to write a new paper. My annoyance stems from the fact that it's not as though these students' grades suddenly took a nosedive, or that there were lots of failing grades. In fact, one of the most desperate sounding emails is from a student who got a B. I checked final grades against midterm grades, and individual final paper grades against earlier paper grades. Generally, there's a slight progression from midterm to final, and most individuals show improvement from earlier papers to later (which is why the final paper is weighted heavier than the first paper--I genuinely work to structure the class so that improvement is rewarded). I had some really great student papers--one paper, in which a student explained Jindal's position on school vouchers, and then explained how his explanation is oversimplifying a complicated issue, got me to clap at my computer while I was reading it.
Today, however, between my frantic student emails which all seem to be hurling themselves at my mercy (as I noted on facebook, my mercy is tired of having things thrown at it today) and the conversations I've had the last two days about teaching--specifically, my program's stated expectations of its teachers, what kind of teaching seems to be rewarded by my program, the program's unclear expectations of us as graduate students, and what our students seem to expect from us--I'm throwing my hands up today. The person who won the teaching award did so because he received straight 5s on his teaching evaluations--which seems suspect to me. "5" doesn't mean anything to me. When I hand out evals, I give the school's scantron forms, but I also hand out my own, short answer forms (based on those used by my former program), which actually give me useful information. Further, there is very little classroom observation that goes on--both times that I've been observed here, I've had to ask to be evaluated. I don't think that very much is known about what goes on inside the classroom here.
Because of this (I conclude), my colleagues and I are getting students who have been here for two and three and four years who claim to have never done academic research in a classroom. There are graduate students in my graduate classes who claim to have never written a paper longer than ten pages, and don't know how to write something 20 pages long.
I feel like I keep encountering issues which seem like they're connected, and seem like they are systemic in some way. I would like to be able to do something about it, but I also want to maintain my sanity and use my finite amounts of energy and time in ways which reflect my priorities. My purpose in writing this is to vent, with the intention of blowing off steam to maintain my sanity. Next year, I will have some leadership opportunities in my department to at least offer support for graduate students who feel as though they're floundering when writing, and I intend to once again re-formulate a first year composition class. Now that grades are submitted, I think the next thing for me to do is rest and recuperate. I tend to have less patience when I'm fatigued, which is definitely contributing to today's frustration and annoyance.
Tuesday, April 17, 2012
Lecturing
I read this post about lecturing at Inside Higher Ed. It occurred to me that, while I've taken a pedagogy class and read a lot about teaching, I've never actually learned to lecture. I've learned why lecturing is bad, and alternative teaching methods, but never how to actually lecture.
I've written and given conference papers, which have ranged from 10-30 minutes (and the 30 minute one was actually the time I was allotted). I've given one conference paper where the conference planners specified I was *not* to simply read from the page, but should give a presentation. I've done plenty of presentations in graduate classes, which have included summarizing texts, giving background information, and leading a discussion. (And a couple of times professors even gave me feedback on those--but not always.) And when I taught two sections of a WGS course that had 35 people in each section, I would often present information to the class, which I would supplement with powerpoint slides (primarily because with that many people, not everyone could see what I wrote on the board).
But I've also taken large lecture classes (a couple of which actually had professors who asked questions to the giant, several-hundred person class--and sometimes the handful of us who would answer would get into sort of interesting discussions), and I know that the basis of those classes is the lecture. I've certainly experienced some really interesting lectures (along with some terribly boring ones). So, even though it's frowned on, where do I learn to lecture?
I've written and given conference papers, which have ranged from 10-30 minutes (and the 30 minute one was actually the time I was allotted). I've given one conference paper where the conference planners specified I was *not* to simply read from the page, but should give a presentation. I've done plenty of presentations in graduate classes, which have included summarizing texts, giving background information, and leading a discussion. (And a couple of times professors even gave me feedback on those--but not always.) And when I taught two sections of a WGS course that had 35 people in each section, I would often present information to the class, which I would supplement with powerpoint slides (primarily because with that many people, not everyone could see what I wrote on the board).
But I've also taken large lecture classes (a couple of which actually had professors who asked questions to the giant, several-hundred person class--and sometimes the handful of us who would answer would get into sort of interesting discussions), and I know that the basis of those classes is the lecture. I've certainly experienced some really interesting lectures (along with some terribly boring ones). So, even though it's frowned on, where do I learn to lecture?
Saturday, March 3, 2012
Where I'm At
Yesterday certainly was an exercise in perspective. The two areas of the country where I have the biggest concentration of friends is the Ohio/Indiana/Kentucky tri-state area and Tennessee, both of which were hit with storms. Everyone seems okay, though a friend's relative in Indiana lost her house, and when they last checked in yesterday afternoon were unable to leave its remains (I guess they were in the basement) because the downed power lines were too dangerous.
Add to that a friend who was in the hospital last night after a mild heart attack, and a colleague at school who underwent surgery for a faulty artificial heart valve yesterday (her third open heart surgery). Perspective, perspective, perspective.
I'm actually picking up a section of English 2000 taught by my colleague who had surgery yesterday. I don't know her--I believe she's an instructor--though I think I've chatted with her before a talk before. It's the same class I'm teaching, though her syllabus looks much, much different from mine. There's another teacher who's picking up another section of the class, and she's given me access to her Moodle page, so I can see how she's going to proceed with the class.
It will be interesting to see how this goes. Midterms are due week after next, so I'm picking up this class almost smack dab in the middle of the semester. Though I've complained about the lack of community in my department, it's opportunities such as this which kind of make me put my money where my mouth is--am I willing to pitch in when its needed?
This coming week, there's a meeting scheduled with the intention of "envisioning graduate studies" in my department, which was put together after some heightened awareness of student unhappiness. I'm open about the fact that I was ready to leave my first semester here--only the promise of the course offerings the next semester (sexology, southern lit, and Faulkner) and one class I was taking whose professor was completely engaged and exciting--kept me from reapplying to other schools over Thanksgiving that year. And it wasn't a shock about the difficulty of grad school--at UT, I spent the first month going--shit! Who the hell is Wittgenstein and why has he been mentioned in every class so far? Rather, it's a lack of structured support for incoming students, especially those coming in with an MA. For students with a BA and MFA students, they have structures built in--they have a week of orientation to prepare for TAing a section of a large class, which gives them a built in cohort with which to learn. For incoming MAs, there was nothing--not a welcome from a faculty member, not a here's what you can expect, not even here's where the refrigerator is. There was an EGSA meeting for an hour, with a welcome and things, and a welcome to Baton Rouge booklet with useful information about neighborhoods and for using PAWS and things. And everyone attends the big English department meeting the Friday before school starts.
Still, at UT, there was a week of orientation for everyone, which was overwhelming, but incredibly informative. Several professors participated, and by the end of the week I felt like a part of my cohort and had a sense of who to talk to about what. Here, there's supposed to be a mentoring system in place, but it's a crap shoot whether the mentor a new student is assigned to will actually respond. (You'd better believe I have--my mentee is a priority to me.) Many of us have gravitated to other departments, like WGS and Mass Comm, because (perhaps because they're smaller) they provide the kind of support and community that's lacking in English.
And with March here, it's now less than a month away that the WGS graduate student organization is hosting a screening of the documentary Miss Representation. We had a very productive meeting with the director of the Women's Center this week, who's offered quite a bit of support for the event. So, fingers crossed!
Add to that a friend who was in the hospital last night after a mild heart attack, and a colleague at school who underwent surgery for a faulty artificial heart valve yesterday (her third open heart surgery). Perspective, perspective, perspective.
I'm actually picking up a section of English 2000 taught by my colleague who had surgery yesterday. I don't know her--I believe she's an instructor--though I think I've chatted with her before a talk before. It's the same class I'm teaching, though her syllabus looks much, much different from mine. There's another teacher who's picking up another section of the class, and she's given me access to her Moodle page, so I can see how she's going to proceed with the class.
It will be interesting to see how this goes. Midterms are due week after next, so I'm picking up this class almost smack dab in the middle of the semester. Though I've complained about the lack of community in my department, it's opportunities such as this which kind of make me put my money where my mouth is--am I willing to pitch in when its needed?
This coming week, there's a meeting scheduled with the intention of "envisioning graduate studies" in my department, which was put together after some heightened awareness of student unhappiness. I'm open about the fact that I was ready to leave my first semester here--only the promise of the course offerings the next semester (sexology, southern lit, and Faulkner) and one class I was taking whose professor was completely engaged and exciting--kept me from reapplying to other schools over Thanksgiving that year. And it wasn't a shock about the difficulty of grad school--at UT, I spent the first month going--shit! Who the hell is Wittgenstein and why has he been mentioned in every class so far? Rather, it's a lack of structured support for incoming students, especially those coming in with an MA. For students with a BA and MFA students, they have structures built in--they have a week of orientation to prepare for TAing a section of a large class, which gives them a built in cohort with which to learn. For incoming MAs, there was nothing--not a welcome from a faculty member, not a here's what you can expect, not even here's where the refrigerator is. There was an EGSA meeting for an hour, with a welcome and things, and a welcome to Baton Rouge booklet with useful information about neighborhoods and for using PAWS and things. And everyone attends the big English department meeting the Friday before school starts.
Still, at UT, there was a week of orientation for everyone, which was overwhelming, but incredibly informative. Several professors participated, and by the end of the week I felt like a part of my cohort and had a sense of who to talk to about what. Here, there's supposed to be a mentoring system in place, but it's a crap shoot whether the mentor a new student is assigned to will actually respond. (You'd better believe I have--my mentee is a priority to me.) Many of us have gravitated to other departments, like WGS and Mass Comm, because (perhaps because they're smaller) they provide the kind of support and community that's lacking in English.
And with March here, it's now less than a month away that the WGS graduate student organization is hosting a screening of the documentary Miss Representation. We had a very productive meeting with the director of the Women's Center this week, who's offered quite a bit of support for the event. So, fingers crossed!
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