a job ain't nothing but work

[davy]

Seriously. She told me she suspected I would "hit the ground running."

Yikes!

[Maaik]

Seriously dude, Fuck Yes.

I am going to buy you a drink at the Bingham show.

[davy]

 

[Anglophile]

Congrats!

Mind if I ask what type of Librarian job: public or academic reference, archival, youth, etc?

Edit: Also, you got your job during National Library Week

[Greg Nog]

A POTENT PORTENT

[morgan]

Congratulations, Davy! You deserve it!!!

[davy]

Congrats!

Mind if I ask what type of Librarian job: public or academic reference, archival, youth, etc?

Edit: Also, you got your job during National Library Week

Ha! I knew that was going on, but I hadn't yet put the two together! Awesome.

It's in the local public library (my favorite library, exactly where I wanted to be) and I believe the official title is "Information Services Librarian"--the librarians here do a little of everything. A lot of reference work, to be sure, but also outreach, collection development, and I'm sure there's some other stuff I could get involved in down the line.

Thanks, morgan!

[G.C.R]

Oh hells bells Davy, you just made me squeal a little in the uni library. That is O for AWESOME news.

[edison]

Awesome, Davy! Very happy for you, too.

(edit: also OT, have a meeting tomorrow with the new Secretary-General of the Social Science and Humanities research institute where I work to look into creating a new position for me in that structure (he seems very supportive of the idea and actually got back to me on it himself, but since he just arrived doesn't really know what he can actually do). Most likely not much will come out of it anyway because "blaah! hiring someone? paying them more than minimum wage? with an actual contract?" is the standard university HR response whenever something like this comes up, but still, I am a bit nervous)

[morgan]

The assistant dean of my department approached me (that's right, he approached me!) and asked me if I'd be interested in being a TA and doing some other stuff around the department. So, you know, that's PRETTY RAD. Don't know when I'll be starting (maybe the summer? fall?), but I'm excited because it turns out that I have to drop out of the library science program for the next two years to work on my history degree (apparently I can't work on both of them at the same time, what the heck?), so this will keep me well-connected during that period.

[davy]

good news and bad! 

But I guess the good news came after the bad news, chronologically speaking, so...good on you!

[YojimboMonkey]

hooray for davy!


but fuck a job seriously FUCK a job, I worked a fucking 16 hour day yesterday and didn't get home until almost 2 am so I slept in just a bit this morning and now I have people screaming for my fucking blood.



FUCK. a job.

[elpollodiablo]

Man, what I do for ducats is going to change dramatically in three months. Would anyone like to relate their first year teaching experiences? Freshmen comp. stories especially welcome!

[hannah]

Intense

[diesel_powered]

See: Hannah.

[elpollodiablo]

Care to elaborate?

[ellaguru]

I think I'm having a mini-meltdown. This is probably the wrong thread. I skipped two of my classes today. I am so, so exhausted but I sleep like crap half the week — the nights when Jacob isn't here. I am sick of teaching, of the students who don't hand in papers and the students who don't bring assigned readings to class. I am ready for the semester to be over, but once the semester is over I need to find a summer job, and I don't know what job to find. It's been gorgeous outside the past few days but I have conjunctivitis and a sinus infection. I can't keep up with Russian. Three more weeks. Just three more weeks. Two research papers to write, three presentations to give (including one in Russian), 42 papers to grade, 21 speeches to grade...

[YojimboMonkey]

a job ain't nothin but a pain in the fuckin ass and an excuse for people less competent than you to say fucked up stupid shit to you without you being able to punch them in the face

[diesel_powered]

Sounds about right.

[hannah]

I teach college composition and speech -- two sections (about 40 students total) each fall, one section (about 20 students total) in the spring. I had four days of training, a textbook the school'd ordered for me... and that was it. I started teaching and started taking my own classes simultaneously. That was intense enough, of course.

More specifically: The first semester I had a lot of trouble filling the four 50-minute class sessions each section met for; I've now, three and three-quarter semesters later, figured out a mostly perfect balance of twenty-minute extemporaneous lecture, fifteen-minute close analysis of assigned text (assuming, of course, the students actually bring the text to class, which is a huge assumption to make), five-minute writing exercise, ten-minute recap/discussion/what-have-you. I make a lot of jokes and ramble incoherently.

The most intense aspect is dealing with students who email lots and lots of excuses, making time to meet with students who can't make office hours, and in general trying to be fair and generous and available and flexible without going absolutely insane. I also am always shuffling how I prioritize the following:

- Introducing texts and ideas and issues these students would not otherwise encounter.
- Explaining how to write a coherent sentence.
- Making students feel comfortable, as I know this is pretty much the smallest classroom experience they will have in at least their first two years here.

It may seem like you can do all at once, or that one is obviously more important than another, but then you get some student who sexually harasses you, or another who keeps writing Barrack Obama and George Busch and Christopher Hitchen's, or a third who is obviously smart and talented but misses two class sessions a week.

There's more I can say, obviously, but this is a good introduction.

edit: pollo, do you know what your appointment entails? will you be responsible for designing your syllabus? I can obviously forward you materials if/when you need them.

[elpollodiablo]

Yeah, I get to design my syllabus! I'm (probably hilariously and naively so to y'alls jaded, bloodshot eyes) pretty excited about it. But then, I also get three weeks of (purportedly) intense training. And the vibe I get from others in the department is so open, encouraging and supportive that I feel I've been given a little justification for my doe-eyedness. Though maybe they're just sharpening knives behind my back, ready to feed me to the ravening 18 year olds.

[milesofsparks]

I have not taught those kind of classes, but my general teaching experience is the first time you teach any new topic is terrible and embarrassing but you just get through it, and by the second time it's fine.

[Bernard]

I am now extra bitter at the neglect from my comp teachers. I was always present, on time, prepared, and can spell.

Squeaky wheel, etc. but still. 

[diesel_powered]

The last time I taught, I had a pretty similar experience to Hannah where I got tossed into teaching two sections of video production with no training and no textbook (an experience that was probably equally, if not more, frightening for the students as it was for me since they couldn't zone out in class and consult the textbook after.) Overall, the class sections shook out to be about as follows:

20% Smart, creative, engaged ideal students
30% Scared, but engaged mid-performers
20% Engaged students who would do well if they'd only show up
10% Inert coasters who don't do anything, ever
10% Perpetually bored overachievers
10% Over-intelligent sociopaths who think they deserve to do anything they want

The few sociopaths combined with a lot of my own unresolved issues about education ensured that I pretty well spent my prep time paralyzed with anxiety (and freaking out here) until I absolutely couldn't wait any longer and had to force myself to crank out a few handouts and make an outline for lecture. Ultimately, much to my surprise, I was never chased out of the classroom with torches and pitchforks as I expected, and the worst that happened was that the few sociopaths marched into my program director's office demanding that I be fired because apparently my practice of allowing students to bring project grades only up to a B with extra credit (instead of an A) was grossly discriminatory. Against them. Because apparently they missed the part of the syllabus where I mentioned that class policy applies to everyone. And this issue was all taken care of over a couple beers with the program director who was a bit shocked at how hardass my classroom policies were.

Overall, I think the primary problem I had was that the culture in which I was teaching was radically different than the culture in which I was educated. Where I was teaching was pretty much entirely outcome based, so students frequently halfassed projects with the expectation that they'd just get extra credit for whatever they did later. The culture in which I was educated demanded that you do things right the first time around, and as far as I'm concerned, was a far more effective preparation for professional life than the alternative. In the middle of student freakouts over this policy, I told them that since they were mostly architecture students, if they get to a firm and they fuck up the pitch the first time around, the get fired. And their reputation as a fuck up disseminates throughout the small, disgustingly incestuous architecture industry. They don't go back to the office and redo it well when the time frame for the project suits them better. But, as students are, certain students just couldn't get down with this because they are unique snowflakes and must be indulged constantly. But I imagine you probably won't have too much trouble with a few entitled drama queens.

But basically, what Hannah said. The hardest part was dealing with students who don't do the work and/or believe that they're entitled to not doing the work. Following that, it's dealing with all the unprofessional bullshit that students typically engage in. Showing up late, wasting time in class, etc. etc. etc. For the most part, my priorities that I had to juggle came out to:

- Introducing work and ideas that students would not otherwise encounter
- Successful project management (which really became the focus of the class, all the technology and whatnot was really just a footnote compared to how to successfully complete a video project)
- Making students feel comfortable, particularly those who don't have a clearly defined idea of what they want to do with the medium

[diesel_powered]

I am now extra bitter at the neglect from my comp teachers. I was always present, on time, prepared, and can spell.

Squeaky wheel, etc. but still. 

In all fairness, it was probably exactly that. Another big problem I had was balancing time between the good students and the bad students. Inevitably, the bad students would suck up all my time and my interaction with the good students would suffer. Which is a problem, because it's the interaction with the good students is really what keeps you from murdering the bad students.