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Unexpected bonus
Jan. 29th, 2002 08:35 pmWho woulda thunk it, but my classes are actually not bad. In fact, this is shaping up to be my best teaching experience since Bryn Mawr, maybe. For whatever reason this group is engaged and makes smart comments. We did the whole "Why did Truman drop the A-Bomb, really" thing today and a bona fide argument broke out. It pleased me no end. They're still only halfheartedly doing the reading, but a few people are actually doing it and retaining it. Better than I expected.
To all the undergrads on my friendslist, I should have said a while ago that I do not really have the usual arrogant TA syndrome of despising all students, my past comments notwithstanding. I just got beaten down by my last adjuncting assignment, when they said NOTHING all semester long and I really hated going in and trying to dance around like a trained seal for an hour while they fell asleep... Truly I am not a very good teacher. But I do at least try. I get upset when no students try at all, I admit it.
You must also realize that I never did the reading either when I was in college. No one does. Knowing that makes it very difficult to construct a course. I'm just saying.
Anyway it is nice to not hate adjuncting, since it is a terrible schlep to do it. Train at 8 AM, bus and commuter rail ten hours later. I always fall asleep on the bus and get wrenched awake to run to catch the commuter rail 4 blocks away, which I did today by about 15 seconds. I also have a lot of other extraneous stuff that I am feverishly trying to accomplish. This paper I wrote a long time ago is being published and the editors decided to do a real once-over on it and give me a month to answer their queries. And now I am concluding that the paper sounded a lot better as an impressionistic collage of ideas than it looks now that it is going to be printed. I really hate it, but I only have until Friday to straighten it out, dammit.
To all the undergrads on my friendslist, I should have said a while ago that I do not really have the usual arrogant TA syndrome of despising all students, my past comments notwithstanding. I just got beaten down by my last adjuncting assignment, when they said NOTHING all semester long and I really hated going in and trying to dance around like a trained seal for an hour while they fell asleep... Truly I am not a very good teacher. But I do at least try. I get upset when no students try at all, I admit it.
You must also realize that I never did the reading either when I was in college. No one does. Knowing that makes it very difficult to construct a course. I'm just saying.
Anyway it is nice to not hate adjuncting, since it is a terrible schlep to do it. Train at 8 AM, bus and commuter rail ten hours later. I always fall asleep on the bus and get wrenched awake to run to catch the commuter rail 4 blocks away, which I did today by about 15 seconds. I also have a lot of other extraneous stuff that I am feverishly trying to accomplish. This paper I wrote a long time ago is being published and the editors decided to do a real once-over on it and give me a month to answer their queries. And now I am concluding that the paper sounded a lot better as an impressionistic collage of ideas than it looks now that it is going to be printed. I really hate it, but I only have until Friday to straighten it out, dammit.
