#professor life

[trek-tracks]

When a student copies an essay online instead of writing it and then painstakingly changes every word to a synonym until the text no longer makes any sense...

call that the Ship of Thesaurus

[strugglinguist]

I just finished the prep for my lab meeting, and I'm so pumped to see some students again. I really hope some of them can make it! I had 3 or 4 say they wanted to be a part of the summer research. :)

[celestemagnoliathewriter]

Ok gang it’s finals week for me so I need to put my fics on hold for about another week.

Thanks for your patience!

[dandelion-stuff-and-fluff]

There is no feeling quite like seeing one of your struggling students pour their heart and soul into learning and come back from the brink.

Today is a good. fucking. day.

[ridethedarkerwave]

Freedom and the creative life.

Sometimes I don’t understand how people can have regular jobs, the kind of jobs you work 9 to 5 or whatever, Monday through Friday, not doing something you love, looking forward each year to a couple weeks of vacation. At this point in my life, I don’t think I could do it (unless of course I really had to).

I am spoiled. As a professor, I can schedule my classes not to begin until 11:30am or later. I stay up until absurd hours most nights, going to bed anytime from 2am to 5am. Every winter, between fall and spring semesters, I get a full month off from teaching. Time to recuperate. After the spring semester ends at the start of May, I get almost four months of freedom to do whatever I want. Typically I stay home during the summer months to make progress on research and writing, but in the past I’ve also done traveling + summer hiking and camping. Summer is my time to really be creative. The past couple summers, I’ve made significant progress on my book writing project.

My job is not all butterflies and flowers. I work my ass off during the school year, preparing for lectures, grading far too many papers (I often have 90 to 100 students per semester). It can be stressful. As an introvert, I sometimes don’t want to try to be engaging in front of a classroom. I want to just sit in my office or at home, reading a book or working on my computer. But no matter how challenging it can become, I have a difficult time imagining myself doing anything else for a living. I would hate to give up this freedom that I have.

In addition to the freedom of time, I also get to choose which courses I will teach each semester and design their content based on my own interests and what I think the students might find engaging.

At nearly 2am right now, I’ve been finishing an iced coffee while looking over some research notes for the book I’m writing. I sit in my kitchen at the large table with minimal lights on, the windows open, the peaceful quiet and sounds of insects outside. Often I listen to music for hours, or Twitch Hearthstone streamers in the background, the ones who talk to their chat. (I think it makes me feel a little less alone.) Now that classes have started again, I sometimes have to set my alarm, at least on the days when I teach at 11:30. Tomorrow I just have one class at 4pm, so I can sleep as late as I’d like.

I remember once reading a quote about Madonna, something about how she is up late at night, doing creative work while much of the world around her is asleep. I feel similarly about my life, and I don’t think I’d want to have it any other way.

[kdsmiththewriter]

Professors?

[sophies-junkyard]

Truly the funniest thing about puppet history is that it’s still educational. I DID learn what defenestration is! I learned all about Bessie Coleman and Victorian medicine and the Trung sisters! I also watched a grown man passionately fist fight a puppet being worn by his friend. It’s about balance.

[trek-tracks]

Thanks to this godforsaken website I got jumpscared while helping my students do library catalogue research on literary techniques

[wanderingmygiant]

Learning More, Getting Dumber

The day before the comprehensive exams for my doctorate, one of my advisors told me that I would never be smarter than I was the day before my exams. It was a reassuring thing to tell me, and I repeat a version of it to undergraduate students before they present their senior projects (e.g., "no one in the room knows more about this topic than you do").

I got that reassurance in 1996. Since then, I've been teaching college-level courses in US history and a variety of upper-level classes in migration and British history. Early on, a colleague told me he loved being a historian because we accumulate knowledge as we age, always adding depth and detail to what we know. There is little chance a new discovery will leave us behind or upend the theory we have based our whole knowledge base on (looking at you, evolution). I've worked to keep up with changes in the historiography and read into new topics to develop my curricula over the years. There is nothing like teaching a topic over and over again to encourage you to find connections between events and themes across time. Now, I have spent twenty years researching and publishing on mostly 19th-century Scottish topics related to Paisley and the Poor Law. Later this Spring I will submit a book manuscript on the subject, and I am just at the end of the first-draft phase on that project. I've added immeasurably to the amount of information stuffed in my skull before those exams,

And this is the moment in my career when I am most overwhelmed with the sheer volume of knowledge I have not acquired. My book includes a chapter about Paisley's dilemma over their tiny, inadequate mental asylum. There is a VAST scholarship on the history of psychiatry in the nineteenth century that I have barely touched and will get two sentences in the chapter. I feel like I've got a pretty good handle on middle-class social conventions - then a two-page section of Dickens upends me in confusion over the proper use of calling cards. Even reading about topics I adore but do not research (fashion history, this means you!) I'm now looking at books I admire, seeing the huge number of things I've had to leave out of my own text, and wondering what wealth of detail these authors know that they just couldn't squeeze into the book - and that therefore I'll likely never learn. My colleague did not warn me about this: my total body of knowledge is shrinking in proportion to my awareness of how much there is to learn.

I'm preparing to teach for the second time a course specifically on Social History of Victorian Britain. These students will read one or two books (assuming they follow the syllabus), glean details of daily life from Oliver Twist (I know, not strictly Victorian, but close enough for my purposes), conduct research into a juicy Glaswegian murder and research and write a paper on a Victorian Invention of their choice. With their final grade, they will confidently exclaim, "I've learned Victorian Social History!"

Oh, my. What they don't know.

[arczism]

ehhhhhhhh i am in love with them

[turningpageswithlills]

“You’re a woman with a brain and reasonable ability. Stop whining and find something to do!” ~Maggie Smith

[celestemagnoliathewriter]

Not HP related but I got my course evaluations back from my students and 🥹🥹🥹 these are my top 2 comments:

[She] is great in class and promotes a very inclusive environment. I felt very welcomed in class as a Black student on a campus that can feel very alienating at times.

I have never had a teacher/professor make me feel more cared about in my life. Sometimes all that a homesick freshman needs is for someone to know their name. I hope she never changes the way she teaches.

Excuse me while I cry in proud professor tears 😭

[doydoune]

it's the year of our lord 2023 and I'm only now learning about Phoenix's and Maya's baker era

pov: you're living your best life making bread and a Lego figurine bursts into your bakery and now you have to prevent a girl from being burned alive as a witch

[jellybeanmilksteak]

I'm supposed to be teaching but I'm looking at pics of snails