Orientation: 2/3

Orientation has generally been pretty good. Each day has had two time slots with three concurrent events, allowing new GAs to pick two. I've gone to presentations on teaching. Today, for instance, were talks on creating a classroom persona and managing a class. I learned about the Future Professoriate Program, which offers a small stipent in return for working with your department and the the program staff to attain greater experience with teaching and constructing a portfolio. It seems to be more oriented toward doctoral students than masters' folks, but if I do a Ph.D here I'm definitely interested. There was a presentation for everyone on Universal Design for Learning, which included a little bit about disability theory; that was new and interesting to me.

SU has provided food for us. Light breakfasts, and tickets for lunch at a number of nearby food merchants, most of whom are located along a strip of nearby Marshal street that targets SU students. Yesterday I had pad thai, and today it was a gyro with some falafel. Tomorrow, I may try the Indian place. Yesterday evening there was a barbecue for everyone around dinner time at the top of the hill on the south campus. It was at a building called the Inn Complete, which is a sort of pub for grad students, faculty, and staff. Since the food was free, there was a lot of meat (protein!) and I'm still on a tight budget, I unashamedly stuffed myself.

I've had some good conversations with fellow incoming GAs and others. After the last session today, I spent a while talking about face-blindness and my experience with it with the resident grad student who is leading the group I'm a part of. I'm happy to spread awareness! There's a grad student from Wilmette I've gotten to know a little bit. She's involved in grad student union organizing and warned me about some health insurance changes SU might be making in regard to classification of grads. I expressed interest in learning more, so she added me in to the email loop this evening.

I've made a bunch of notes in the sessions, including some stuff to follow up on. Some suggestions were things I'd picked up on in undergrad classes when I began, later on in my time at Parkside, to think a little actively about how professors were managing their classes. I expect it takes some experience in the trenches to easily synthesize self-management, classroom management, and course content all at the same time. As I said to one of the other students, I also feel a little nervous about TAing in a field that is not actually what my degree is in. There's a lot of overlap between cultural geography and anthropology, but if I was going to TA even an intro class in geography, physical or cultural, I'd want some time with textbooks and some talks with the professor first. Especially if I had any class-leading duties.

I did my five minute presentation today. I brought a nicer shirt to wear and did a quick change in the restroom prior to the session, which was probably not necessary. As is typical, I only glanced at my notes and largely winged it. Especially when I got the one-minute warning. I didn't quite say everything I wanted to, but it was close. Not that the content really matters I suppose. Other students presented on some interesting things; prescriptive grammar and it's place in society, plate tectonics, a height and velocity problem in physics, and the Korean alphabet. It was interesting seeing snippets of other people's areas.

Tonight I'm feeling tired after reading another long piece on political policy making, I may take a break and play some Hearthstone.