Trip to the Dentist

I actually had a rather pleasant dental appointment today. Both hygienist and the dentist were very nice and complimented me on my teeth. But, I was expecting a scary time of it because I hadn't seen the dentist in about 3 years (gasp!). I didn't have any cavities, and my gums hadn't receded like I thought. In fact, the hygienist thought my gums were fine and getting gum grafts was not necessary at this point. Some hygienists are a bit uppity and will judge you for everything wrong with your teeth. Ever been to one of those? Well, this hygienist helped me realize that it was the floss I was using that left my gums so sensitive and not because I wasn't flossing right. So everyone out there: Don't use that Glide slippery stuff! It doesn't actually remove the plaque from your teeth like the gritty kind. Apparently flossing twice a day doesn't matter if the floss doesn't work like it's supposed to. Who knew?

Procrastination

Check out the first sentence of this blog post...(feeling the irony)....

Meh!

I take life too seriously. A few undergrads in my class left after the quiz when they saw another student leave. The first student had told me about her reason for leaving, but I think the other ones got confused and thought class was over with. We still had 40 minutes left of class!! What were they thinking? So I somehow get the idea that it reflects poorly on me that students leave early. Yep, I internalize everything, take everything personally, and constantly criticize myself for perceived failures. Yay! Isn't my life fun?

This Semester is Difficult

I feel like everything that came before this semester was simply the warm-ups. I used to have fun with school and I thought being a graduate student was the bee's knees. But, now I feel like things have gotten more serious and the stakes are higher. I'm teaching this semester, writing my comps and dissertation proposal, assisting a faculty member with a research project, and working 16 hours a week as a GA. The GA itself is rather serious, too. This GA could constitute an actual job if they weren't getting a GA to do the work. It reminds me somewhat of my time as project coordinator. I start with a literature review, identify key elements to include in analyses, evaluate the most appropriate statistical procedures to use, and analyze data, among other things. This is a lot of responsibility, coupled with a lot of freedom to choose my own direction.

Plus, teaching is incredibly difficult for me. I am a novice, but I keep forgetting to allow myself the novice status. I think that I should naturally be good at teaching, or that I should be able to figure out this whole teaching thing with aplomb. But, no...I'm just happy I haven't crashed and burned completely yet. I've been reading a book about being a first-year faculty member and have discovered that first-year faculty tend not to understand where students are having difficulty with the material, and tend not to be able to utilize efficient strategies to address student's difficulty with the material. Teaching is a craft; it is a skill. And as such, it can be honed and developed with practice. Therefore, I don't have to be good at it. But, I can become good at it. Gee, I hope this little pep talk is working.

In addition, I have a tendency to put writing on the back burner. If I didn't have such a lack of confidence with writing, I'd probably have about two publications by now. But, no...up till now, I have been unable to teach, take classes, do research, and write all in the same semester. Now I must do all of that and more. I must write both of my comps projects, the first three chapters of my dissertation, and resubmit a grant proposal. But, I happen to also be teaching, researching, and working at the same time! How can I do it? How can I cope? Well, let's see...the coping strategy I usually rely on, denial, is not actually conducive to accomplishing my goals. If I ignore my writing demands and push them to the back burner, I'll never graduate.

No wonder first-year faculty members are so stressed out. I'm still a graduate student. I don't have to worry about tenure, advising loads of students, participating in committees, teaching 2 or 3 classes, applying for grants, publishing articles, and establishing a research program. But, teaching one class, applying for one fellowship, researching, and writing three major papers is plenty enough for me to feel stressed!

Lessons Learned

I don't think I'm going to give quizzes in class anymore (after this semester). I prefer the idea of giving them assignments to get them to read the book instead of quizzes. I keep trying to create short answer quiz questions that will work. But, today I gave out a quiz in which one of the questions was to write down which of the two sleep states corresponded to active, waking EEG patterns. Half of my students listed both sleep states!! What?! Why did so many of them misunderstand the directions? And now how do I grade it because they put the right answer, but they didn't distinguish between the two sleep states? Do I give them the same credit as those who only wrote the correct answer?

I think the problem is that creating test questions really is that difficult. I write them with my own ability and knowledge in mind. But, I keep forgetting that students don't' have that same ability and knowledge, and I can't assume they are going to read the directions or come to the same conclusions about the directions as I would. In measurement class a few semesters ago, we talked about making the directions as short, clear, and concise as possible. Our directions and even the stem of items can differentiate people based on intelligence rather than actual knowledge of the answer. I think I understand now how difficult it is to create items that reduce the cognitive load enough that all people will be able to demonstrate their knowledge. (Yes, I understand not everybody possesses the knowledge, but I would rather know that they got the answer wrong because they didn't know the answer rather than because they couldn't understand the question).

Teaching Takes Time

Why does it take me so long to prepare a lecture?!? Today, I read that one common mistake of new faculty is to spend too much time preparing to teach. Some spend upwards of 26 hours a week preparing for lectures. The recommended time allocation is one and a half hours of prep time for every hour teaching. I can't even fathom that. It takes me 5 or 6 hours to prepare for one hour of lecturing! Grrr!! I want to know why I'm so slow. It's not like I'm trying to be thorough, I'm just trying to present the material in a way that is not presented in the book so that students can hear something new. But, it just takes me way too long. Grrr!!!