Going into Halftime

Week 4 is done. Goodbye Locke; Hello Rousseau! Although I am a liberal, I’ve just never cared for Locke much. He’s just so clumsy.

This blog seems to be working. I lose focus when I’m grading. I did timeline a little on Wednesday during my office hours. I miss it. I’m doing fairly well this term. Jamie Mayerfeld, my prof, doesn’t make us come to lectures if we’ve already done the course with him once before. So I skip Mondays and Fridays so I can work. I teach three sections on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I attend the Wednesday lecture and have my office hours on Wednesdays. I have done pretty well for timelining when I’m not grading. If I had previously been as disciplined about grading as I had been in the past week, I think I’d have performed far better. I’ve gotten roughly 30 done in a week’s time. The difficulty is that I need the “at-home” days if I’m to actually get anything done. The three days I’m on campus are very unproductive. My focus is shot by the time I get home. I also see that without the blogs to force me to see the pattern of my progress is that when the grading is done, my mind will wander to something else before I return to timelining. I need to make sure I hit timelining immediately after grading is over.

Grading is my biggest distraction. I really understand why we’re seeing such a rush to the bottom in terms of education quality. Without good grading, the students can’t improve. But the students themselves don’t really care if they improve. They just want to be entertained. So the dominant, if utterly unethical strategy, is simply to be an entertainer. Make the grading easy, be entertaining, and you’ll get good evals with minimal work. You’ll have plenty of time for research. Well, I don’t have the heart for that. I just don’t.

On the other hand, there’s quality teaching time and shit teaching time. Being a TA is shit teaching time. I’m willing to teach any of the courses I’ve already designed. I’m willing to teach Arab-Israeli or Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict. Unlike being a TA, I don’t have to absorb any new material—the courses are designed. I get a grader and only have to grade 30 papers at a shot. I do a commitment matching thing with the grading. Students who participate in class get put in my stack the first time around. Then students who participate and students who made above a B+ get put in my stack the second time around. Then students who participate, students who improved from the first paper to the second and then students who made above a B+ get graded by me for the final. For the most part, those who care get a lot of attention. Those who don’t, don’t. The grader gets paid a completely ludicrous wage of $600/term. So I try to give them as low a comment burden as possible. First cut, everyone gets comments. As students fail to meet teacher commitment in terms of comment output, they get downgraded. It’s a time-efficient deal for me. I get maximum satisfaction for my efforts.

I’m thinking I need a respite from being a teaching assistant. There’s a job that’s come up with the graduate school, being a graduate student advisor for a program to advise minority undergrads to help them get into PhD programs. It’s twenty hours a week and the shifts are eight hours, so I could pretty much guarantee a three-day week. If I got the job, if the department wants me to teach independently, I’ll take it during the unpredictable, off-term when they offer it. Otherwise, I’ll be out of the TA loop.

I don’t know if I have a shot at the job. But I think I’ll shoot them an application and see what happens.