Good to Go!
The past few days have been full of stress and headaches. First on Saturday, I was doing an errand in downtown. I was thinking about getting a library card for the town library, because they may have some books that the school library doesn't. Well, when I got there and was getting ready to lock up my bike, I found that my keys were gone! I put them in a purse in the basket behind my bike, so they must have fallen out sometime during the ride. I went down the route three times, and I never could find them. The third time, I even took someone with me to help me look. I had a spare for my bike, and my landlord got me a copy of my apartment key. I still kinda feel bad that I lost them like that. I'm not sure if I'll ever find them. And today was the deadline to pay fees and confirm registration for the fall. I went all the way down to the wire to get my directed reading in Disability Studies. I found out just last week that in order to get approved, I had to write a proposal. The professor I asked wanted me to write something for her, and I've been trying to think pretty much all summer what I was going to say. I just tried to get something together really quick, but then it was still a struggle to get everything pulled down. The good news, though, is I'm set now! My classes are registered, my fees are paid, and everything's good.
This week is the orientation for teacher's assistants. I'm sticking around and sitting in on a lot of it in case I do get to teach next semester. I also learned a little bit more of what I'm going to be doing with this science class. More or less, it's like I'm auditing a class. I'm expected to go to this class and listen in to see where the students are going, but I'm not responsible for assignments. And twice in the semester, I'm going to be given papers to look over. I can't grade them, but my job is to look them over for problems and give them a possitve comment and a couple of things they should work on. The way I'm looking at it, I'm evaluating 48 scenarios, or I guess in another way I'm writing reviews for 48 fanfics, only they're not . . . fictitious. Then, I'm supposed to have conferences with the students about the comments I gave them. Sounds like a pretty good deal. The big thing that my supervisor wants from me, from what I can tell, is feedback. This "fellow" program has not been used for two years, and she's changing the guidelines, and they're even talking about making this a work study for underclassmen. So she wants to talk to me on a regular basis about what works and what doesn't. I don't think I'll have much to say, but we'll see.
I'm already starting to think about my preliminary exam in the spring. It's happening at the end of March. That's not a very long time to read. The exam I'm scheduled for is 20th Century Brit Lit. My last coarse, which I'm taking this semester, is about Modern Brit Lit, and I'm hoping that it will get me in the right mindset. Most of the works on the list I have not read. Some I'm familiar with, like "Brave New World." I never read it, but I know it's about a dystopia, a rather amoral dystopia. But I'm trying to get my notebook together and print off Sparks Notes, just like I did with the Qualifying Exam. I think I'm mostly concerned about the secondary sources. They just gave a list of authors, no works. I've been trying to find an easy-to-access bibliography that will have the works of those authors so I can pick out the works that have to do with Brit Lit, unless they're just listed for theory. It's weird. Well, I'll get to that.