Bloggy, Bloggy, Bloggy-Bloggerson

...or some notes on all the stuff rumbling around my head today

It is 11:34am; my students are busily working on their first in-class essay. The mood is tense - the lights are out (not my fault - our room is having essay-appropriate technical difficulties), and the tap-tap-tapppppp-TTTAAAAAAAPPPPPPING of the 25 keyboards is deafening. I swear I can almost smell the fear. Man! [smirk] Being a teacher rocks...

Now, how is DOESN'T rock is also relevant to the time and place I am currently occupying. I walked in at 11:05am for this 11am class. Let me preface this by saying that I am never, ever, ever late to class. Really. But, today, I needed copies; our secretary's office was locked, while she was on a quick smoke break, and so I had to ask a colleague to make copies for me and bring them to my room. Anyway -- five minutes later, I walked into class. You're probably asking yourself, "Five minutes??? Give me a break! Who cares about 5 measley minutes?!?!?! You're the teacher -- what are they gonna do - take away your BIRTHDAY????"

Um, well... see... yeah... I walked in, made my apologies for my tardiness, asked for their last minute worries, or prayer requests (haha), and after my students laughed nervously and started the process, I noticed an unfamiliar and seemingly unresponsive face in the back row...

"What!!?? An interloper...," I thought to myself.

Just as I was about to make my polite inquries or demand that he/she print and be gone (occasionally, random students will get caught in our computer room at the start of class - frozen like deer in headlights -- and they usually just sit quietly and hope to not be noticed... they are always noticed, FYI), I opened my big, fat mouth, but before I could speak, all of my lazy, bastard brain synapses began firing at once (as apparently they had been on their own smoke break), and I relaized that the student I was about to shoo out and/or scold was...

...MY BOSS. Eeek.

I played it off; I said hello, and then I carried on about my business as usual.

Peer reviews, boss-driven evaluations, and even scary, scary student assessments [sarcasm] -- none of these worry me in the least, but I was really taken off guard today -- if only because I really didn't see her in the back row. Does my obvious, non-observant (harhar) teaching style make me a bad teacher, I wonder? Was I too informal as I sought to make my jittery, nervous students more at ease? Will she make an assessment of me as a weak or poor instructor, based only on an in-class writing day? [sigh] Being a teacher is HARD...

Moving on... new subject!

Rochelle and I have been talking for over a year about doing a collaborative conference paper; specifically, we want to do something that takes Dr. Hugh Burns's "collaborate to graduate" mantra, and make some conclusions about technology (ie: BLOGGING) and the potential for collaboration during the oh-so-secretive dissertation phase of the PhD. I know I couldn't be slugging through teaching, wifing (is that a word??), and writing without the friendship and feedback I've gotten through this blog. Not to mention, though our dissertation topics could not be more different... Rochelle and I have been willing and able to read, review, and comment on various drafts of the other's work. And, we both have plans to do more of this peer-editing in the coming weeks.

We've talked a LOT about the ways in which she and I have been responsible for "de-mystifying" the dissertation process at TWU too. For example, in the past four years Rochelle and I have been doctoral students, EVERY single GTA who became ABD has gone on the job market and left within (literally) weeks of their oral exams. Consequently, most of these same people (people who tyook exams as much as three years ago, BTW), have yet to turn in a single page of the dissertation. I think R and I are proof that staying put has its advantages (if not the financial benefits). Moreover, what this has meant (in terms of bringing the dissertation out of teh "closet") is that our peers -- who are not even ABD yet, in may cases, are seeing and hearing us go through this process. They hear our struggles and they are aware of the collaborative effort it has been (luckily) for us. They know we blog about the process, and they are seeing, first hand, that writing the dissertation doesn't have to happen in a vacuum -- or whiel you sit all alone at Starbucks for the next two years. We have schedules that we've talked about, and we're sticking to them -- when we can. And when we can't? Well, we talk and blog about THAT too...