A necessary update.
I'm back in Boston, for just about a week now. It's mostly good, but it's a little weird, and sometimes I get little pangs of London-missing. It's strange living in Boston and not being a student. And it's even stranger, because not only am I not a student, I'm a teacher. Instructor, I think, is my actual job title.
Yes, I'll be teaching freshmen at BU how to read and write. Quite literally. There's a whole department at BU devoted to making sure the students can write coherent essays, and I used to work as a tutor for the department when I was an undergrad. This would be a pretty boring job, but the writing seminars are based around historical or literary themes (ie: Victorian novels, 20th century poetry, American consumer culture, etc) and I'm teaching a class about art in modern culture. I get to write my own syllabus; there's a few guidelines as to what sort of written assignments they have to do, but the reading list is all my own. This sounds exciting -- and is -- but has also proven to be a huge pain in the ass. I never realized how much effort the whole process requires. And I'm only hired part-time (just one class, with a remote possibility of getting a second) so chances are I'll need to find some crap-ass second job to stave off utter poverty.
At any rate, it's a huge relief to be at least partially employed, and not by some temp agency or fast-food restaurant. Hopefully it will give me a better sense of what academia's like, and whether or not I want to go for a PhD.
I'm going home in about 10 days, for 2 weeks, one of which will be spent in SC on vacation with the fam.' I'm looking forward to going home, more than I have over the past several years. (Except, I think, I was pretty stoked last Christmas too.) Chill-out time. Other people cooking my food. Beach in SC. Mom to take me shopping. (Need professorial outfits so the students get the general impression that I am at least several years older than they are.) Friends? (This part I'm not so sure about -- I just read Barb's statement of refusal to come back to Cleveland for several weeks.) Sleep.
PS: It is callous of me to not give a fuck about Israel and Lebanon? I don't. I just can't bring myself to take in any more information about the situation. I'm on media-spectator strike.
Yes, I'll be teaching freshmen at BU how to read and write. Quite literally. There's a whole department at BU devoted to making sure the students can write coherent essays, and I used to work as a tutor for the department when I was an undergrad. This would be a pretty boring job, but the writing seminars are based around historical or literary themes (ie: Victorian novels, 20th century poetry, American consumer culture, etc) and I'm teaching a class about art in modern culture. I get to write my own syllabus; there's a few guidelines as to what sort of written assignments they have to do, but the reading list is all my own. This sounds exciting -- and is -- but has also proven to be a huge pain in the ass. I never realized how much effort the whole process requires. And I'm only hired part-time (just one class, with a remote possibility of getting a second) so chances are I'll need to find some crap-ass second job to stave off utter poverty.
At any rate, it's a huge relief to be at least partially employed, and not by some temp agency or fast-food restaurant. Hopefully it will give me a better sense of what academia's like, and whether or not I want to go for a PhD.
I'm going home in about 10 days, for 2 weeks, one of which will be spent in SC on vacation with the fam.' I'm looking forward to going home, more than I have over the past several years. (Except, I think, I was pretty stoked last Christmas too.) Chill-out time. Other people cooking my food. Beach in SC. Mom to take me shopping. (Need professorial outfits so the students get the general impression that I am at least several years older than they are.) Friends? (This part I'm not so sure about -- I just read Barb's statement of refusal to come back to Cleveland for several weeks.) Sleep.
PS: It is callous of me to not give a fuck about Israel and Lebanon? I don't. I just can't bring myself to take in any more information about the situation. I'm on media-spectator strike.