today is a weird day: the last day of teaching for me for the semester. usually (and especially my first few semesters of teaching) the last day is sort of momentous. i usually feel (even if my students don't, and most could probably likely care less) like we've all sort of come through this long, complicated, unique journey together and it feels sort of awesome to me to reach the end of it. it helps too that all my classes thus far have been portfolio-based, so even the students who participate the least and miss tons of classes or whatever still end up turning in a hefty, significantly involved packet of papers they've written. it's a nice sort of landmark moment in a way and (i'd like to think) even for them it's sort of an encapsulation of everything that they've gone through to get to the end of the class.
as such, usually at the end of a class, as i leave the classroom for the last time, it's a little hard not to reflect a bit on what i've learned and how things have gone. this probably hearkens back to the first time i finished teaching a class for the semester, in 402 bryan hall, and after i turned the lights off i just stood there in the room for about five minutes, just amazed that i'd actually survived. increasingly, though, and especially today, my inclination was to just speed out of the room and get back to my office to start working on the newest project, or paper, or whatever. and, i'll be honest, i find that depressing.
one of the best things about my "year off" two years ago teaching just comp as an instructor here as WSU was the fact that i actually got to experience teaching. it wasn't something that i had to muscle through while taking seminars and worrying about publication and dissertations and theses and, you know, real-life stuff like relationships and making time to cook food. all throughout my master's program, i had enjoyed teaching, but i was also acutely aware that every moment i spent on teaching was a moment taken away from time i could have been working on my own papers. so it was a really great experience to be able to just teach and know that giving a student an extra ten minutes was just cutting into my TV-watching time (which is, obviously, a pretty easy decision to make if you like your job, which i do) and nothing else. i felt the same way about my summer class this past summer...i had some trouble fitting 15 weeks of class into six weeks for sure, but teaching that class was fucking fun. those experiences gave me the evidence to be able to honestly say that yes, i like teaching and i'm extremely lucky to be able to do it as a job. i could not have said that during my master's program. i never had a chance to think about it.
now, as much as i'm loving the ph.d experience, my one great regret is the backstep i've taken from teaching-as-profession back to student-first-work-second. i'm really looking forward to this changing next semester when i have a little bit more time in general. not less work, of course, but at least more freedom to shift that workload around more.
1 comments:
yayay for the good things to come in your next semester! as stressful as being a TA was during grad school, i do miss it. i learned so much from grading papers especially. who knew?
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