(no subject)
Busy busy week!
- Sunday: last minute went with a friend to the Anza-Borrego Desert to check out the superbloom there. I had suggested leaving at 6, getting there at 8, returning at 10, before the highway traffic set in. But it's too early for him, so we moved it back 2 hours. What happened was we left at 8, got there at 10.30, got back on the road around 12.30, and got home around 4 or so. There was a LONG time spent on a SINGLE road that was jammed up.
- Monday spent working on a cover letter. YL is having a difficult time so been doing a lot of emotional labour there.
- Tuesday I led a couple of events for the Grad Day of Action. Turns out "Courtyard outside the Physics Hall" gets read as "meet in the Physics Hall" *rolls eyes* So only one person showed up for the lunch in the courtyard, and another one for the hike into the Gardens. But the Gardens are beautiful right now, so I can't complain. Hung out the rest of the time with other grads in the Grad Lounge.
- Wednesday, had a very brief SSFAC meeting! And then did the SFRG, and went out to dinner with Lindsay and Eun-Joo. My Clarion classmate, Alan, got in around 10pm :D
- Thursday, Alan visited! We wandered the campus first thing in the morning, then I left him in the Creative Writing department. He came by mid-afternoon, so we went to the Eaton Collection to check out some stuff, like an artbook of Flatland, the original edition of Ted Chiang's STORIES OF YOUR LIFE, the original hardcover of Ellen Kushner's SWORDSPOINT.
We had dinner at Tio's, and at night, I found I had to walk back to campus so I could get the file for the final exam I'm giving students.
Right now, I'm staring at a giant pile of final essays to grade, feeling super thankful I made them go through a gamut of three workshops (much of this pile = previous drafts that I made them attach). They're feeling pretty good about this final essay, confident about the final exam, and I'm going to miss a bunch of them.
Losses of teaching this class:
- Sank in a LOT of energy talking to students that took away from writing my dissertation
- Felt woefully under-prepped most of the time to teach some of the more theoretical texts, like there were problems I feel I should have anticipated #impostersyndrome
- Still can't save some students. A student emailed me at 1am, 6 hours before the essay was due, being apologetic for not coming to workshop and asking to hand in his essay on Saturday. SATURRDAY? I assigned this essay A MONTH AGO to give you ample time to prep, PLUS had three workshops for each stage of writing! Maybe if you weren't gallivanting off to LA two hours away half the quarter you'd be doing better work. I understand some folks gotta hustle, but come on.
- I thought I was a morning person, but apparently teaching at 7am is way too morning for me.
Wins in teaching this class:
- Watching the Engineering students glow as they talked about going through Special Collection archives and handling papers directly about the founding of their college
- Freshman student going from strength to strength with each essay, and being able to teach her directly some database tricks
- One of my students may have scored an internship with a professor to help with linguistics research (his major) as a result of the final essay project.
Not bad for a class I was recommended for simply because I was out of a job.
This entry was originally posted at http://jhameia.dreamwidth.org/244881.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
- Sunday: last minute went with a friend to the Anza-Borrego Desert to check out the superbloom there. I had suggested leaving at 6, getting there at 8, returning at 10, before the highway traffic set in. But it's too early for him, so we moved it back 2 hours. What happened was we left at 8, got there at 10.30, got back on the road around 12.30, and got home around 4 or so. There was a LONG time spent on a SINGLE road that was jammed up.
- Monday spent working on a cover letter. YL is having a difficult time so been doing a lot of emotional labour there.
- Tuesday I led a couple of events for the Grad Day of Action. Turns out "Courtyard outside the Physics Hall" gets read as "meet in the Physics Hall" *rolls eyes* So only one person showed up for the lunch in the courtyard, and another one for the hike into the Gardens. But the Gardens are beautiful right now, so I can't complain. Hung out the rest of the time with other grads in the Grad Lounge.
- Wednesday, had a very brief SSFAC meeting! And then did the SFRG, and went out to dinner with Lindsay and Eun-Joo. My Clarion classmate, Alan, got in around 10pm :D
- Thursday, Alan visited! We wandered the campus first thing in the morning, then I left him in the Creative Writing department. He came by mid-afternoon, so we went to the Eaton Collection to check out some stuff, like an artbook of Flatland, the original edition of Ted Chiang's STORIES OF YOUR LIFE, the original hardcover of Ellen Kushner's SWORDSPOINT.
We had dinner at Tio's, and at night, I found I had to walk back to campus so I could get the file for the final exam I'm giving students.
Right now, I'm staring at a giant pile of final essays to grade, feeling super thankful I made them go through a gamut of three workshops (much of this pile = previous drafts that I made them attach). They're feeling pretty good about this final essay, confident about the final exam, and I'm going to miss a bunch of them.
Losses of teaching this class:
- Sank in a LOT of energy talking to students that took away from writing my dissertation
- Felt woefully under-prepped most of the time to teach some of the more theoretical texts, like there were problems I feel I should have anticipated #impostersyndrome
- Still can't save some students. A student emailed me at 1am, 6 hours before the essay was due, being apologetic for not coming to workshop and asking to hand in his essay on Saturday. SATURRDAY? I assigned this essay A MONTH AGO to give you ample time to prep, PLUS had three workshops for each stage of writing! Maybe if you weren't gallivanting off to LA two hours away half the quarter you'd be doing better work. I understand some folks gotta hustle, but come on.
- I thought I was a morning person, but apparently teaching at 7am is way too morning for me.
Wins in teaching this class:
- Watching the Engineering students glow as they talked about going through Special Collection archives and handling papers directly about the founding of their college
- Freshman student going from strength to strength with each essay, and being able to teach her directly some database tricks
- One of my students may have scored an internship with a professor to help with linguistics research (his major) as a result of the final essay project.
Not bad for a class I was recommended for simply because I was out of a job.
This entry was originally posted at http://jhameia.dreamwidth.org/244881.html. Please comment there using OpenID.