Graduate School: 1 Week Down, Many To Go

[fadethecat]

So, graduate school! I've now had one week of real proper classes, though I still haven't been to two of the seven, on account of labor day. Monday's my roughest day, with three classes: the archeology lecture, Latin sight-reading, then Hesiod. Eek. At least only two of those assign homework/paper/readings, eh? Anyway, so far

Comments

[sophielandon]

UT's art history program has one of these all wrapped up in a bunch of department-specific stuff; I always called it a cross between charm school and boot camp. All taught by one professor (same one every year) and called "Art Historical Methods". A library tour, a tour of all the object collections on campus, slide library indoctrination, several sessions devoted to various methodological controversies, with short presentations critiqued by fellow classmates, and a final paper based on an object not in your particular period, with a half-hour presentation to go along with. By the end of it, you should be able to produce an abstract and eventual paper for a professional conference.

Teaching/pedagogy stuff came later, in a one-hour class you were supposed to take after you had already started being a TA, and it was considerably more random. If I had it to do, it would be a required class before you ever ran a discussion section, and would be much more formal--the entirely optional course offered to AIs by the Teaching Effectiveness Center would be much more useful then.

[fadethecat]

Oh, interesting! This one doesn't have any sort of projects; it's a Pass/Fail one-credit class strictly for the purpose of being able to schedule it and require it in the system. There's also the difference that all of the grad students are TAs their very first year; there were some mandatory seminars during orientation about that, too. Except for me, on account of the fellowship I have.

[sophielandon]

Interesting. I never knew whether all of UT makes/made you wait until you get your MA to TA, or just my department, but obviously that doesn't work quite right on a combined program. (Then you AI after you've passed your orals.) In the meantime, students who need a little cash or want to get paid to audit a class can grade.

[fadethecat]

The TA's here seem to do a lot of grading, so maybe there's a different in terminology between the universities? In any case, they do seem to fling all the entering grad students right into it in this department.