Please Press Play
For those of you out there who may be peeking to see how I'm doing on the old dissertation project, you should know that I am 100% not doing anything. Well, okay, maybe 98%, as I do catch myself thinking about place and meaning in the shower on occasion.
There is a good reason for this, however. I was awarded a Chancellor's Teaching Fellowship for this quarter, and I am currently co-teaching a course of 140+ students, lecture-style (which is entirely new to me). The class is at least tangentially related to my project (actuallly, working with classes like this probably helped shape the project before it even was a project). It's a general Humanities course on "The Late, Great State of California," and we are looking at the ways different crises--earthquakes, a lack of water resources, ethnic conflict, and social/anti-social happenings (basically cults and the counterculture)--have shaped our experience of California. It's a good way of thinking more deeply about place and what (and how) it means.
Anyway, I'm responsible for the first half of the class--on tectonics and hydrology (yeah, exactly what my English degrees prepared me for)--and I'm loving it. But it's also kicking my ass workwise. I've been putting a shitload of work into each of my 50-minute lectures. Way too much, probably. When they're going down, they breeze by. But putting them together takes forever. But, alas, they probably wouldn't breeze anywhere if it weren't for the work.
Anywho, that's the state of things. I prefer to think of the diss. as gestating, rather than hibernating (or, you know, dying).
[Also, my girlfriend moved to Germany. But that's a whole other story.]
Wheeeeeee.
There is a good reason for this, however. I was awarded a Chancellor's Teaching Fellowship for this quarter, and I am currently co-teaching a course of 140+ students, lecture-style (which is entirely new to me). The class is at least tangentially related to my project (actuallly, working with classes like this probably helped shape the project before it even was a project). It's a general Humanities course on "The Late, Great State of California," and we are looking at the ways different crises--earthquakes, a lack of water resources, ethnic conflict, and social/anti-social happenings (basically cults and the counterculture)--have shaped our experience of California. It's a good way of thinking more deeply about place and what (and how) it means.
Anyway, I'm responsible for the first half of the class--on tectonics and hydrology (yeah, exactly what my English degrees prepared me for)--and I'm loving it. But it's also kicking my ass workwise. I've been putting a shitload of work into each of my 50-minute lectures. Way too much, probably. When they're going down, they breeze by. But putting them together takes forever. But, alas, they probably wouldn't breeze anywhere if it weren't for the work.
Anywho, that's the state of things. I prefer to think of the diss. as gestating, rather than hibernating (or, you know, dying).
[Also, my girlfriend moved to Germany. But that's a whole other story.]
Wheeeeeee.
posted by TRM at 2:57 PM
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