Winter caretaker for the Overlook Hotel. Duties include upkeep and minor repairs. Perks include large amounts of free time. Perfect for ABDs.
I’ve previously noted some of the ways that works of fiction (such as Candide, The Lord of the Rings, and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn) are related to graduate school and the job market. Settling down to watch a scary movie on Halloween night, however, I found what may be the best dramatization I’ve seen about working on one’s dissertation (especially when on fellowship): The Shining. For example:
As a graduate student there were many times when my wife would come home from work and ask me how my work went during her time away. Typically, I would respond to this with some vague statement intended to disguise the fact that I had gotten up at 10, read things on the internet, taken a shower at 12:30, eaten lunch, opened a document to work on, read other things on the internet, taken a nap, and then read some things on the internet until she got home. If she ever called during the day and needed me to bring something to her, the disruption to my “work” had the potential to frustrate me to no end. It wasn’t so much that I was working but that I had the potential to work and may actually start doing so at any moment. Any interruption was thus an interruption of my potential to actually accomplish something. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Thankfully, none of my classes have what I consider to be too many students. I was surprised recently to hear somebody complain about having 27 students instead of the expected 22. I realize that, for a class of that size, five students is a 23% increase, but I cannot yet grasp the idea that 27 students can be too many. Of course, I’ve been conditioned by teaching years of classes with between 50 and 80 students. Maybe I need to bookmark this post and read it in a year or two when I find myself acclimated to my new environment and complaining to the registrar about every student over 20.
While I still don’t feel that any of my classes are too big, I have been surprised by the lack of difference between teaching a class of 65 students and a class of 35 students. One nice thing is that grading takes about half as long. In terms of the proportion of students who participate daily and the day-to-day classroom experience, though, things are not a lot different. I’m not ready to start complaining yet, but I wouldn’t mind a smaller class. I guess I vastly overestimated the amount of time it would take to change my perspective on this issue.
During my time teaching college students I have tried a number of ideas to encourage students to complete the class reading assignments. This semester is different only because I wrote a rant about the need for professors to hold students accountable for coming to class prepared. Toward that end, I have given the students in each of my three courses daily quizzes since the second day of the semester. These quizzes typically consist of one question about the previous day’s class discussion and two questions about the reading.
So far, the quizzes have been good and bad, with the negatives seeming to outweigh the positives. The positives include students who have an incentive to do the class reading. In the case of busy students (and most of them claim to be busy), this sometimes means that they read for my classes first because they know they will be held accountable for the material on the quiz. The negatives include taking up a lot of time at the beginning of each class (especially during the 50-minute MWF classes), student whining, and the fact that I am constantly reminded that not all students come to class prepared. In previous semesters there was no way to know how many of the students had skipped the reading. Now I do. Finally, as I’ve noted before, student preparation does not necessarily translate into student participation.
Right now I’m not sure what I’ll do to encourage student reading next semester. I’ve considered allowing students to self-report their level of preparation and also give themselves a daily participation grade. This approach has worked for others that I’ve observed and I think that it is worth a try. On a daily basis, the biggest benefit of this idea would be the increased class time. The most comforting aspect, though, may be my reduced knowledge of the number of students who don’t do the reading.
Since I took it upon myself to school my freshmen students to the fact that students who talk in class at a private college are wasting a lot of money, student behavior has greatly improved. Sure, students still occasionally talk to each other during class, but these sidebar conversations are much shorter, quieter, and less distracting overall than they were before I staged my intervention. Unfortunately, I’ve had another problem related to student talking: many of them are reluctant to participate in class.
Over the course of my teaching career I have done a lot of things to try to improve student participation and to give quiet students a chance to participate in meaningful ways. These efforts have included in-class writing, debates, and the ever-present think/pair/share. Despite the use of these efforts this semester, there have been many days when I posed questions only to be met with blank expressions or students looking down at their notes.
Obviously, students who have not prepared for class may not feel comfortable participating, but when I call on students they typically have relevant contributions to make. I’ve considered whether I am simply asking the wrong questions, and some of my questions are surely too obvious, too complex, or considered irrelevant, but I do not think that this is typically the case. As I learned student names this semester and was better able to call on students to draw them into class discussions, the problem lessened. The idea that student participation is a key part of my classes gradually seems to be sinking in, but there are still times when I want to tell my students to S(peak)TFU.
I’ve noted before that How I Met Your Mother is one of my favorite comedies, but the beginning of this season has been even better thanks to Ted’s experiences teaching architecture to college students. Full episodes are available online for your time-wasting pleasure, but here are a few clips that provide a taste of what I’m talking about.
First, we have Ted’s first day of class, which is actually similar to my own first day teaching college students. And second, Ted gives Barney the kind of pop quiz that I can only dream about. I bet that would get students’ attention.
Pitse1eh’s post the other day about drowning in teaching as a first-semester assistant professor got me thinking about my own division of labor (or lack thereof). She wrote:
I’m drowning. I really am. I find myself wondering if I worked all those long years just to get a job that I don’t even like. I constantly tell myself that it will get better, that everyone has a hard first year, that when all of my classes aren’t new prep things will calm down and I’ll be able to return to what I really love — research.
Over a month into my first semester as an assistant professor, I also haven’t had any time for research. As I commented on her blog:
I’m in my first semester at a liberal arts school, and my experiences have been largely similar to yours. I have a 3-3 teaching load and I currently have two new preps, but I am exempt from service (including advising) this year. I teach at 8 or 9 am every day (and I am terrible at working from home), so I am in my office from 7:30-4:30 five days a week and do whatever else needs to be done at home (usually on Sundays). I’ve been working about 50 hours a week but exam season is in full swing so I anticipate that that will increase.
Next semester I will have one new prep and I will probably continue to have one or two new preps each semester for the next few years until I’ve covered all of the classes that will make up my primary rotation. As I look around at my colleagues, they have a set of prepared classes that they teach and occasionally teach a new course. They obviously still have to spend time grading but they are not doing nearly the amount of work to prepare that I am. I’m looking forward to getting to that point.
The biggest difference between the two of us seems to be that I like research but love teaching. Because of this, the fact that I have spent absolutely no time on research since the semester started doesn’t bother me. I’m looking forward to getting back to research over winter break and continuing next semester when I have a bit more time, but for now I don’t think much about it.
I would imagine that there are a lot of people in Pitse1eh’s position, having accepted jobs that will eventually allow them to spend time on research but finding themselves overwhelmed with teaching. Although I’m not in this position, I’m still looking forward to next semester when I will have fewer preps and more classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
I like the idea of Monday-Wednesday-Friday courses. Three 50-minute class sessions each week can help prevent students from getting bored in class. These short sessions are also more easily filled with a class exercise or discussion, allowing me to cover fewer topics in more depth.
Until the beginning of this semester, I had never taught a Monday-Wednesday-Friday course. In graduate school my courses were either once or twice a week. I never really considered the ramifications of this until the semester got underway and I realized that there are not enough week days to prepare for two new MWF preps.
So far this semester I’ve been preparing for each class session a day or two in advance. This means that I prepare for Wednesday on Monday or Tuesday and Friday on Wednesday or Thursday. This also means that the only in-office time I have to prepare for Monday’s class is Friday afternoon. Unfortunately, I can rarely prepare quickly enough to avoid my prep time overflowing into the weekend.
Someday when I only have to prep one class (or fewer!) a semester, this may not be too bad. As it is I’ve resolved the problem in the near term by arranging my spring preps for Tuesday-Thursday.
Interview season is quickly approaching for the five schools that are hiring sociologists this year. If you are fortunate enough to land one of these interviews, you don’t want to blow your opportunity by doing something stupid while eating a meal. I always thought this was the kind of thing that graduate programs told their students, but given that others I know had vastly different graduate school experiences, I suppose it doesn’t hurt to pass this sort of information along. With this in mind, a recent Inside Higher Ed post has some helpful advice about what to do (and not to do) while eating with potential colleagues. Some highlights:
Choose an item priced in the middle range of the menu offerings. You need not order the least expensive, but do not order the most expensive item. Accept menu items “as is.” Refrain from asking for substitutions or asking that ingredients be excluded.
If you choose to drink any kind of alcohol, be sure to drink slowly — and be mindful of your drinking. Have a glass of water along with your beer, wine, or mixed drink. Given the circumstances of interviewing, remember that you may be tired, possibly hungry, and perhaps nervous — all factors that have implications for consuming alcohol.
To this I would add not to eat anything complicated (crab legs) or likely to fling sauce on your interview attire (spaghetti). In the case of alcohol, the advice I’ve received is to let others order first and follow their lead. You do not want to be the only person at the table ordering alcohol, but if somebody orders a bottle of wine for the table there is some social pressure to join in. At one of my interviews last year there was about a glass worth of wine left over at the end of the meal and I was encouraged to take it with me to my hotel to unwind before the next day’s interviewing. I did.
Even more important than what you eat and drink is this piece of advice:
As a job candidate, you will be focused on wanting to make a good impression and getting the offer. However, remember that you too are conducting an interview. Sharing a meal with prospective colleagues offers an opportunity for you to consider if you want to work with them. Here are some questions to consider:
What is their rapport?
Are they respectful of each other?
Do they seem to get along well?
Are they collegial?
These are people you might be working with closely for many years. They need not become your close friends, but you do want to have a sense of working successfully with them as colleagues.
One of the dangers of assigning a book that has been turned into a movie is that students will think they can watch the movie instead of doing the reading.
One of the pleasures of assigning a book that has been turned into a movie is asking students questions about characters and events that did not happen in the book and then letting them know that I was not, in fact, born yesterday.*
*The pleasure gained from this experience is just enough to make me overlook the fact that it runs counter to my preferred way of dealing with problems.
Eighty percent of students in my introduction to sociology course this semester are freshmen. I’ve taught classes with freshmen plenty of times, but there were lots of sophomores, juniors, and seniors to dilute the freshmenness of them. So far this semester it has been extremely evident that these students have never experienced college life. This is evident in their use of textese, it is evident in their time management skills, and it is evident in their talking during class. Obviously, a lot of talking in my courses is sanctioned but I have had constant problems with students talking to each other instead of paying attention or sharing their opinions with their classmates.
When this happens, my first inclination is to call them out. Unfortunately, I don’t think that this helps anybody but me. Long ago I did some observations in an alternative high school and marveled at the way that students who weren’t paying attention were asked questions that brought them back into the discussion rather than alienating them. This is the model I have tried to follow when teaching my own courses. When these tactics fail, I talk to students after class or during a group exercise and ask them to “do me a favor” and stop talking. This usually works and I think students appreciate that I did not call them out in front of their classmates.
These tactics did not work this semester.
Because of the freshmenness of these students, I feel that one of my jobs is to school them about college life. To this end I spent ten minutes at the beginning of a recent class talking about the financial costs of attending a private college and the fact that students who talk are wasting the money of those around them. I also talked about the fact that college students, unlike high school students, have the choice to stay home. I concluded by telling them that speaking out of turn, whether they are ignoring me or a classmate, will lead to an invitation to leave the classroom. We’ll see how it goes.
