I literally haven't updated in months. This is because life as a doctoral student is actually a lot harder and a lot busier than I expected it to be--and it wasn't like I was expectin' it to be some fairy walk in the clouds with magical gnomes offering me chocolate covered bananas or something. I was expecting a challenge. But what I have been bootcamped into has been more like a Triwizard Tournament, except my three tasks run Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays from August 26th until December 2nd.

I've been teaching Writing 140, a general education requirement that every Freshman and Transfer student must take before graduation. I only teach one course. I only have 17 students. But I now consider myself blessed by the university administrative gods that I was accepted to USC and not Western Michigan University or University of Michigan, Ann Arbor--because those grad students end up teaching like 2 and 3 courses a semester for a fraction of the stipend I am receiving. I don't know if I could do this job for only four grand a term. It's effing hard.

I take back my previous comment. Teaching and going to grad school isn't like the Triwizard Tournament, it's more like ... working at the circus. I'm the chick who trims the Bearded Lady's moustache and nose hairs. I'm an expert with the scissors. The Bearded Lady loves my company. I make her giggle. The Tattooed Man and Electra the Human Lighting Rod visit our tent for haircuts and ice cream because I'm a wiz with the clippers and make a mean French Silk ice cream cone. The trick is the waffle cone, not the sugar cone. But then the Ringmaster comes in and says, "Lydia broke her hip. You need to take her place." And he shoves this shiny leotard and lacy parasol at me and expects me to shave my legs. "Lydia is a tightrope walker," I say and hand back the parasol, the leotard is kinda nice. Sparkly. "That's right," he assures me and grabs me by the shoulders, "It's the greatest balancing act on earth."

I'm expected to write great fiction, deconstruct, phenomenologicalize, and psychoanalytically (and brilliantly) apply structuralism to texts, meanwhile creating lessons three days a week for 17 eager young minds in order to transform them into rhetorical argumentative writing machines. So I feel something akin to Lydia, The Tightrope Walker.

Instructor Evaluations are coming up. I've never gone through an instructor evaluation before. It feels like I'm slowly petrifying as the day I hand out the evals looms closer and closer. I'll be in serious of need of mandrake root and a strong anti-persiperant around the second week of December. I remember all of the evaluations I filled out as an undergrad, and I'm trying to remember any snide and nasty comments I made, and I'm trying to figure out a formula for karmic retribution so that I may properly calculate exactly how awful these things are going to be.

I remember only one bad evaluation. Out of 4 years of college, that ain't bad. I was quite pleased with my undergraduate experience. But stupid English 395, Writing Internship, pissed me, and the 13 others who mistakenly took that class, off.

Two teachers taught that monstrosity of the English Department. I thought it was going to be educational. I was being trained to tutor students in the Writing Center. I felt like this was going to be valuable information, especially since I wanted to go to grad school and teach one day. The course sucked. It sucked ass. It was disorganized. It was taught by two teachers which added to the confusion twice a week because one teacher would accuse the other of not having a lesson prepared. Then we'd cover grammar to fill the time. We were supposed to keep a diary of every single student we tutored and write reflections. They were collected at three points in the term. I just out and out skipped the last batch. I chose not to do them. I had never singularly rebelled against an assignment in my entire academic career. It felt awesome.

I got a C in the class.

So did everyone else.

When evals came along, I was relentless. I offered loads of criticism. Looooooooads. I wonder how the karmic retribution can be quantified for such an event.

I wish I could be more like Severus Snape.

If I could be more like Snape, then it just wouldn't matter what my students wrote on the evals. I'd mark every grammatical mistake with justifiable antipathy and smirk. I'd wear black, scowl instead of smile, and scare them into submission. And smirk. I like that word. Smirk. I think if I were Severus Snape, I'd definitely do a lot more smirking. And I wouldn't have to waste precious minutes in the shower shampooing my hair. Greasy would only add to the mystery of my withering glare.

If I was more like Severus Snape: none of this smiley-smiley, "Hope you enjoyed your time with me as much as I enjoyed my time with you, and that you learned lots along the way" crap. Just a glare and a turn with a flourish (the cape adds the flourish), and it'd be back to my dungeon where I could finish sharpening my Zhoul-poking stick, or perfect my deconstruction potion so that I could properly analyze A Nightmare on Elm Street for my final paper in my theory course.

I am thinking about that cape. That cape and the flourish. Snape sure is a snappy dresser. As an artist, I should probably wear a lot more black. But by the time I wake up in the morning, I don't feel like being snazzy or leaving rooms with proper smirky flourishes. When I get to my classroom, I'm a vertible blur of bad style. I own two pairs of jeans, and wear them over and over again because I'm too lazy to put on my nice trousers. I don't know why I am so lazy, because my trousers are comfy and they make me took tall. So I wear jeans, my comfy Skechers, and a t-shirt, usually one with a funny message like, "My cat is my best friend" or a picture of Harley Quinn or Samwise Gamgee. My hair usually looks nice when I leave my apartment, but by the time I arrive on campus it's messy and tangled, and my forehead is usually shiny with sweat because I haul around a 30 pound backpack. I weighed it once. It's actually more than 30 pounds on Wednesdays.

I somehow always end up feeling guilty when I grade the students' essays. Like, if they didn't pull off an A, it's a reflection of my poor instruction. But I probably have an overdeveloped sense of guilt, I'm merely a writing instructor. A Potions Master feels more confident and more important. The Potions Master would dispatch the vacant stare students with deadly green light. And somehow I think if I murdered the writing program's version of the headmaster, it would be frowned upon. Because seriously... who am I going to put on my resume as a reference? How could potential future employers contact He Who Must Not Be Named? Would he have an e-mail address that also cannot be named?

Labels: harry potter, teaching

( 4comments )

at November 19, 2005 12:32 AM  Lorie said...

I suppose that was an advantage to teaching high school. There was never a comment-filled evaluation from the students at the end of a class. I think that was probably better for my self-esteem at the time.

And if something I randomly stumbled upon online hadn't already spoiled it for me, I would be very upset that you gave away that Snape kills Dumbledore in book 6. But I suppose the greater crime is the fact that I still haven't read the book at this point.

 

at November 19, 2005 1:21 AM  Lorie said...

On further pondering, I've realized that I have another comment - after reading this it's clear that your program and teaching is a lot of work and stressful, but are you enjoying it? Because I can't get a good feel for that from what you wrote.

 

at November 19, 2005 12:08 PM  Samantha said...

Wow. You haven't read it and yet you've owned it for several months! For shame!

To address your question: I actually love what I'm doing. I probably made it sound worse than it really is because the last week has been hellish. Last Saturday I was near tears because my presentation in my theory course was quickly approaching and my topic changed every time I tried working it. Then Brad asked me when was the last time I just took a day off and did nothing, and I couldn't remember.

So he said I should just not do any work on Saturday and it actually made it a whole lot easier to work on the presentation the next day. (The professors informed the class that the presentation was now going to be 50% of the grade, so I was freaking out.)

I did my presentation on Thursday and the professors said it was one of the best presentations--Three of the creative writing students (including myself) went on Thursday and our presentations were the best of the class. We (the CWs) actually seemed to understand the point of the assignment: pick a topic, pick some theory you like, apply the theory to the topic. The class is made up of literature students (about 10) and the creative writers (4 of us). So I ended up being very proud of us CWs because we seemed to understand what nobody else did.

But just because I nailed my presentation doesn't mean I wasn't sweating. Literally. I started sweating last Saturday and didn't seem to stop until 7:02 p.m. on Thursday. On the day of my presentation, I literally changed my shirt three times because I was sweating and it was gross. And I don't usually sweat. So it was real gross.

 

at December 2, 2005 3:10 PM  Ish said...

It sounds stressful and insane and wonderful. I still insist we are our best when we are uncomfortable. I'm certain you will excel. And honestly, doesn't being too busy and overloaded with challenging but interesting work beat the living shit out of answering phones?

Glad to see you back by the way, though I can certainly understand your absence.