Thursday, August 10, 2006

In which I consider some clandestine pedagogy

I got an e-mail today offering me a Winter Shakespeare class at St. Happy U. It'd be the same class I'm doing this fall, but with the added incentive that I could request my dates and times. Plus, money. Since picking up these gigs at St.H. is part of my hopeful plan to make myself very, very apealing to the English dept. there, I'm totally going to take it. But I have to keep myself from mentioning it to my diss. advisor, for I'm sure that if she finds out that I'm doing more teaching during what should be my fellowship year, she'll haul me in for deprogramming.

The thing is, I really like teaching. It's fun, and it gives me a reason to wear cute clothes. (One of my evaluations from Spring mentioned my excellent shoes.) And I feel like, now that I've mostly gotten the hang of it, I can get more done when I have a set schedule for my days. If nothing else, this summer has proved that I am not a responsible scholar when let loose into unscheduled days. In fact, I'm not even a responsible adult; today I managed to eat exactly once, and that's only because Carl made me a fantastic club sandwich.* And I've spent the evening watching baseball (and Baseball Tonight) and playing Diablo. This summer's experiment with free time has determined that I am, actually, a 13-year-old boy.

In more productive news, I got some lovely burgundy ultrasuede to recover the dining chairs. And this shirt, which is super-cute, no?

*Carl's sandwiches are, seriously, things of beauty. Today's was the Club Continental, with pepper turkey, apple-smoked bacon, swiss cheese, butter lettuce, beefsteak tomatoes, and a parmesean mayo. His plan, someday when he's gone emeritus, is to open Profe Carlos's Sammich Shack, open every day 10-7 unless he has class. And you will totally want to go there.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I do so profoundly want to go to that sammich shop. There seems to be a distinct lack of wonderful sandwich places in the world.

I also am heavy with the teaching and loving every minute of it. I wish I could write my diss on pedagogy.

Anonymous said...

steph, you gotta go see how you like the template (3 column) created by this little machiny:
http://www.wannabegirl.org/firdamatic/

I think it will fix your layout/spacing issues, and looks more like your ole typepad thingy...

Anonymous said...

1) I love the new format

2) I support the outside teaching arrangement, at least as long as you're really and truly getting work done. As I've written elsewhere, I intensely resent the assumption, on the part of paternalistic-if-well-meaning departments, advisors, etc., that they know best how one ought to manage one's graduate school life and finances. I worked an outside job all through grad school, including 16hrs a week (in academic publishing) while on my diss fellowship, and then the same number of hours the following year while a) teaching a course of my own design, b) trying to write my last two chapters, and c) being on the job market. Like you, I loathed unstructured days. And if a structured day comes with a paycheque. . . ? So much the better!

(Especially given that the work you're doing is teaching, I think there's really only a professional upside to it, regardless of whether said institution sees your true worth and snatches you up--it's great to have experience teaching at more than one kind of institution.)