First Evening Away...

Sigh, this is the first Friday I've attempted to spend time at home working by myself. And it is not quite panning out. My boyfriend and I keep exchanging text messages just to feel like we are still connected to each other. Sigh...I don't know if it is better just to work over at his place...

Well...I guess things are a bit better...

With my boyfriend at least. He teasingly called me a dork and a stinker, but he understands and is just concerned about me. I cried in my professor's office this morning, though. He's going to give me an incomplete, but he asked me how everything else was going and I just teared up. So he gave me some really good advice about teaching and handing the test back. Then I met with two students and we talked about the class and that was really good. But, they gave me some feedback that some students thought I was condescending because it seems like I dumb down the content. And I just reacted defensively and tried to explain how difficult I find it to speak coherently in front of groups, instead of asking them to explain better. And then in class I made some blunders and couldn't explain a concept and it was embarrassing. Then I embarrassed the students when I asked them about working memory and they couldn't respond. I felt like I was seeing myself in a new light as I was teaching, and I got embarrassed and distracted. But, I really just don't know how to change things to fix it. And I think I lack confidence. I was fine last semester, but my confidence has taken a nose dive since I started teaching. So yeah...we'll see. At least giving the test back didn't result in any blow-ups. Students seemed to be okay with my attempts to help them succeed, and I evaded any questions about class mean and distribution of grades.

I think I made a mistake

I got my test back today and students did even worse than the previous test, if that was at all possible. And one of the students talked to me because the other students came to him and wanted him to talk to me, but they were afraid to talk to me themselves. They think the class is too difficult and they wanted to talk to the department head, but the student thought they should come to me first.

They are right, the class is too difficult and I have no idea how to gauge how difficult it is for the students. So I'm going to talk to the department head myself and ask him what to do about this test. I can't keep the grades going as they are; some students are failing, most are getting D's and nobody is getting an A.

To top it off, I got a speeding ticket today and I ran a red light and I didn't have insurance. So now I have a court date. And then I went to class and the professor asked each student to specify when they could have their papers done. He forgot that I changed my topic and I blustered through, trying to remind him in front of everybody that I changed my research questions and can't possibly have the paper done anytime soon.

So I went home and cried and cried and cried some more. I talked to my Dad, I decided to ask my other teacher for an incomplete, I decided to stay home and and work from morning till night every weekend for the rest of the semester. And then I made the mistake...I tried to explain that to my boyfriend and it came out wrong. It came out as if I was blaming him for taking up my time so that I am so behind right now. It came out as if I didn't want to see him. He went silent and I think I hurt him. And I think I made a mistake. But, it was self-preservation. If I don't push him out of my life, I'm not going to make it through the semester, and I probably won't graduate...if I even want to attempt that feat anymore.

In which kiki considers her predicament...

Two very excellent ways of affecting kiki's current progress in her Ph.D. program are the following:

(1) Present kiki with a boyfriend, and

(2) Cause kiki to teach while trying to write her dissertation proposal.

There are, of course, two possible directions that kiki can take given the two propositions above:

(1) Get a job and drop out, or

(2) Finish as quickly as kiki can so that she can enjoy more time spent with her boyfriend, and be relieved of her teaching duties.

Given kiki's previous tendencies to place school above all else and her massive ambition and drive to obtain a Ph.D. and make something of herself, it is rather surprising that she was seriously entertaining proposition (1) above. Kiki must have come to the following conclusions:

(1) her boyfriend is pretty amazing, and

(2) teaching really is that reprehensible to her.

These new developments in kiki's life have surprised her indeed. She is very much wishing school to be over soon and to obtain a diploma with at least two words on it..."doctorate"...and..."kiki." At the very least, kiki would wish that the semester was over and she had successfully written her dissertation proposal and historical research paper. Kiki is supposing that her recently acquired propensity to escape school duties by spending time with her amazing boyfriend has substantially hindered prospects of successfully completing the two aforementioned writing tasks. Therefore, kiki is just a little bit nervous and afraid of the upcoming weeks as they may, in fact, stun and debilitate her before she makes it to the end of the semester. Wish kiki luck as she desperately needs it.

Another Quote on Teaching

"Teachers err, I believe, if they pretend that what is by nature difficult can be made easy through clever pedagogy. Any subject can be made easy by trivializing it, but doing so only perpetuates the superficiality and shallowness that we are supposed to be eliminating" (Leamnson, 1999, p. 61).

Leamnson, P. (1999). Thinking about teaching and learning: Developing habits of learning with first year college and university students. Sterling, VA: Trentham Books.

Quote about Teaching

"So, if you are interested in teaching, do not even expect the young to be like yourself and the people you know." ~ Gilbert Highet

So I think I'm experiencing burn out...

I spent all Sunday writing three quarters of the final, the practice exam, and almost the whole lecture for this week. Now I'm just tired of it. I would rather be playing around on the internet instead of working. And so I've recently come to the conclusion that becoming a professor would be a really bad idea. Grad school is hard enough, I don't want to be teaching more than this, I don't want to be working all day and all evening and all weekend long. I want a life, I want to enjoy downtime with my family and friends. I want my work life to be restricted to the hours between 8am to 5pm. I want grad school to be over with! Done! Completed! Finito!! I want this all to be just a bad memory from the past to be tucked into a corner or burned out of my memory. I used to like grad school, but then I started teaching at the same time that I started working on my dissertation. And that was it...no more fun, no more enjoyable research, no more classes for me to join in on discussions (okay, I do have one more semester of classes).

And now I'm changing dissertation topics in midair, but what a relief it seems to be. And I only have about 4 weeks of classes left. That is a relief except for the fact that I have massive amounts of writing left to do that I haven't been doing all semester because teaching is all-consuming and totally draining. Let's see...I suppose I'm just going to have to make it through to the end of the semester. Then I only have two more semesters if I can pull off this whole dissetatin' thing.

I got angry at my class today...

When I got to class, the door was locked and all my students were standing outside. It took me 15 minutes to get things handled and we ended up going to another classroom. I was a little upset about it because we are running behind and I wanted to have them take the quiz today. So I started lecturing and saw one student with her cell phone open and she looked like she was texting. I had a flashback to my teaching advisor telling me that he saw people texting in my class and how he expressed that as an indication of my poor teaching and lack of control over my class. Then I had flashbacks to last week when only 7 people showed up and a student was angry and wanted to talk to me after class about how some of the students didn't like the way other students were showing such disrespect for me. And then I had another flashback to last class period when a student showed up 15 minutes before class to see if she could use my book to look up a few things to finish studying for the quiz, and after I explained the quiz had been moved back, she didn't come to class 15 minutes later. And I think it was actually the same girl who was texting. So I just lit into the class about closing their cell phones and not texting in class. I looked straight at her, too. Suddenly the atmosphere changed. She slumped down in her seat and the other students looked uncomfortable, too. At the end of class, when she turned in her quiz, she refused to look at me and threw her drink away angrily.

And I've felt stirred up about it all day. I don't like having to do that. I don't like having the class descend into a power struggle over respect. I don't like teaching and the majority of the class doesn't like me. I wish I hadn't committed to teach again next semester...