(Belated post – Originally drafted many weeks ago)

Would you say my "teacher hat" is becoming? Or does it just look bizarre?

Welcome to Syllabus Week, the first day of which I am officially allowed (and required) to introduce myself as a second-year grad. (Bizarre.) That seems to imply that I should know something about life, the universe, and STS, and that I'm automatically bumped up the totem pole by the incoming first-years.

This next item deserves its own paragraph: This is the first time in... since high school that I have not moved to a new apartment over the summer. No looking for a new place, no scrubbing the old place, no hauling stuff from place to place, no financial juggling (now that I finally got around to getting back my deposit from the St. Paul house a few months ago...) Anyway, I like my place. (Since I don't have a hat to like.) Deer 51 still wanders by in the backyard occasionally with her two spotted fawns (she’s a she, after all). The groundhog from the drain grate chews his way through the lawn on a regular basis. The wasps have been banished from my window thanks to duct tape and Poster Putty, and the chocoholic squirrel... well, he deserves a separate post.

My schedule includes two seminar classes this semester. Each meets two hours a week, and each has decided to meet for those two hours on Tuesdays. We've had one actual discussion so far. And while going through the readings, I realized that I wasn't reaching for the dictionary every third word. I recognized terms and concepts! Words and sentences made sense when strung together! Even more shocking: I spoke up in class! Multiple times! (Due in some part to the unsubtle hint-dropping of my Committee along those lines last year.) We had one or two STS first-years and a few non-STSers in the class, so it was interesting, and encouraging (and bizarre), to compare myself with them and their discussion comments. There were a few somewhat naive ideas expressed having to do with the nature of science that will get picked apart in the Intro to STS Seminar that we all struggle through in our first semester. Also, it was relieving to be less intimidated by both the other students and the professor (which happens once you get to know them a bit better, and once you witness them rather tipsy with musical instruments in hand... which is also bizarre). Anyway, I used to feel like I spent so much time reading last year that I didn't have time to learn anything, but maybe I really did learn something here and thereafter all.

One new addition to my schedule this year is the undergrad class that I'm supposed to TA for. (Yes, that is correct, without any kind of pedagogical instruction whatsoever except for what we've absorbed and observed ourselves... Yes, again, bizarre. Oh, we did get a “Welcome to the Wonderful World of TAing” booklet published by the university generically, but I only remember paging through lists of helpful campus organizations and a warning in bold sans serif letters that I should Not Date My Students.) The class is called "History, Agriculture, and Society." Too bad I know nothing about history, even less about agriculture (personal experience as a migrant worker notwithstanding), and let's face it, not even the sociologists can claim to know much about that vastly complicated entity we call society. (But at least I wasn't assigned to the dreaded Medical Ethics class.) The first day was pretty easy, though. I passed out the syllabus, and the professor lectured. The second day was equally breezy. I passed out a handout, and the professor lectured. Then the professor packed up and left town. Literally. I had been told that I was supposed to help with Friday classes, which were going to be held as discussions instead of lectures, but every time I talked to the professor, I seemed to gain more and more responsibility for running the class, until finally on Wednesday after class, she took her leave by saying "See you on Monday." At which point I hesitatingly pointed out that we also have class on Friday. Oh, but she was heading to Boston to research in some archives, remember? She'd be gone all weekend -- as in, leaving Ithaca within the hour. Oh. Okay. Guess I have the class all to myself then.

Possibly it was a good thing that I didn't have her standing over my shoulder for an hour, with the potential to override what little authority I could muster. It might have been nice to have more than a vague concept of what she wanted to cover, though. The general topic was a book on Amish culture. Overall, things seemed to go okay. I was a good little teacher and split them up into groups and gave them all questions on colorful paper. (I am determined to give out stickers on the midterm.) Inexplicably, we got through all the questions in just barely under the allotted 50 minutes, but I even had backup topics ready in case there was extra time and I had to stand there in front of the chalk board going "Um, um, I'm not supposed to let you go yet, so... how bout them Amish, huh?" I didn't use the chalk board. But I will. If only for the sake of using it. The only thing that went wrong was that someone (possibly in the previous class) spilled their coffee, which proceeded to float slowly down the center aisle and pool quietly in front of the projector. By the end of class, the room was divided by a thin brown rivulet, which, amazingly, no one managed to step in.

Phew. The next challenge will be remembering 41 names.

So much for looking to the past and to the present. I also got a glimpse of the future by sitting in on the B Exam, aka dissertation defense, of a senior grad. Two hours of acute anxiety, legitimizing the last many years of your existence to the four people who decide the course of your future, and who are also about to be transformed from your superiors into your peers -- and then, champaign. How reassuring it is to see that it is possible, and that it does happen, after all.