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Summer teaching
Jul. 15th, 2007 11:06 amI spent most of yesterday avoiding the task of planning Monday's class, while feeling too guilty about it to actually enjoy myself. I have a strong aversion to planning classes, and I'm not entirely sure why. I'm sure it's at least partially self-fulfilling: I usually end up writing up my lecture notes late at night, at the last minute, and the fear associated with losing out on sleep has no doubt attached itself to the activity. I think it's also the activity in which most of my teaching anxiety resides. I have convinced myself that college teaching is the only occupation for which I'm at all suited. The thought of working in a hierarchy, like in a business, disgusts me to no end, and I'm sure I would quickly be at odds with my superiors. My research jobs have been uninspired, and while I can imagine myself writing the odd paper here or there, a full-time research position seems impossible: I haven't exhibited that sort of drive, and anyway I have enough trouble coming up with enough research work to do part-time.
So if teaching is my only option, that's a lot of pressure on me, and so I'm afraid to one day discover that I'm no longer any good at it. This is how I see most of my skills (singing is another big example), as magical gifts from God (or whomever) which could be withdrawn at a moment's notice. So every lecture I write is a test to see if "I still got it", and every mediocre result is disheartening. I'm also afraid to discover that I don't ENJOY teaching.
This is all miscognition and absurd pessimism, of course. The most absurd thing about it is that I am evaluating my teaching abilities during a summer course, where I'm teaching 4-6 hours a day, four days a week, with little time left over for introspection. The students are worn out by each class, and that makes me feel worn out. Summer teaching just is not fun, period. It's not just me: while teaching my very first class, back at Northeastern, during the summer, I was told by an experienced professor that, even though he had been teaching for X years (where X>20 maybe?), the summer class he had just finished teaching was like nothing he'd done before, in terms of workload and energy drain. I am fooled by the fact that only during the summer does my workload approach that of a normal high-school teacher-- only during the summer do I work full-time rather than part-time-- but a full-time professorship doesn't mean 40-60 hours of teaching prep. Some of that time is earmarked instead for research, for advising, for committees...and those are activities which might actually invigorate and restore me, ways in which I can be productive outside of the classroom.
So if teaching is my only option, that's a lot of pressure on me, and so I'm afraid to one day discover that I'm no longer any good at it. This is how I see most of my skills (singing is another big example), as magical gifts from God (or whomever) which could be withdrawn at a moment's notice. So every lecture I write is a test to see if "I still got it", and every mediocre result is disheartening. I'm also afraid to discover that I don't ENJOY teaching.
This is all miscognition and absurd pessimism, of course. The most absurd thing about it is that I am evaluating my teaching abilities during a summer course, where I'm teaching 4-6 hours a day, four days a week, with little time left over for introspection. The students are worn out by each class, and that makes me feel worn out. Summer teaching just is not fun, period. It's not just me: while teaching my very first class, back at Northeastern, during the summer, I was told by an experienced professor that, even though he had been teaching for X years (where X>20 maybe?), the summer class he had just finished teaching was like nothing he'd done before, in terms of workload and energy drain. I am fooled by the fact that only during the summer does my workload approach that of a normal high-school teacher-- only during the summer do I work full-time rather than part-time-- but a full-time professorship doesn't mean 40-60 hours of teaching prep. Some of that time is earmarked instead for research, for advising, for committees...and those are activities which might actually invigorate and restore me, ways in which I can be productive outside of the classroom.
