Learning Space/Teaching Space

This spring, I will teach for the first time at the same university where I did my undergraduate work (Big U). I'm sure other people have made this transition before; I actually have as well. But it got me thinking about the difference between learning spaces and teaching spaces.

I actually took one class at the university I currently work at (Little U) and had it accepted as transfer credit in my BSc program, so I'd been on campus before I was hired to work there. But it was still a bit of a shock to find myself teaching in the very same room that I had taken that one solitary class.

This room in Little U was very distinctive in that it had a pillar right in the middle of it. As a student, I never wanted to be behind that pillar because you were always shifting trying to see around it to the front of the class and the board. As an instructor, I also disliked that pillar because if I moved around at the front of the class, students at the back would pop in and out of my line of sight as I moved.

It was odd that I taught in that very room in my first semester there, and nine semesters later, I have yet to be scheduled back into that room.

I find myself wondering what it will be like teaching at Big U; I just found out which room my class will be held in, and it's one that I sat in as a student for multiple classes. In the same room, I had a physical anthropology class (which was my inspiration for pursuing a biology degree in the first place), an introductory psychology class (not the one where I first met my current husband; we actually were together in that weird pillar-room class at the other school), and seventeenth-century literature (I don't remember much about that class, but I loved the prof).

As you can see from my asides, there are a lot of memories of being a student in that classroom, including sitting in it with the rest of my classmates as we waited to begin our final exam for psychology only to find out as the time ticked away and no one showed up that the prof had slept in. The exam was delayed by almost an hour and a half, and I can you tell that by then, many of us were just big balls of nerves. I ended up with a good grade, but I suspect that was probably more a result of the professor feeling guilty than me being particularly brilliant.

As a teacher, I don't think the spaces that I teach in develop as many strong memories. There is one room at my current university that when I was assigned it the second time, I requested a room change because I remembered how uncomfortable I was in it and didn't want to subject the students to that as well. (The back wall of the room was all mirror and I was terribly distracted by my own image moving back and forth as I lectured; I imagined the students would be too for their presentations, hence the request for the room change.)

But when I think of other institutions I've taught in, I can barely remember the rooms. There's only one that really stands out, and that's not because of the room as much as the previous occupants, or at least one of them, because I'd nearly gag walking up to the front of the room because of the terrible body odour that lingered there for the first few minutes of our class. But that has little to do with the room itself (though I remember that room being very sunny, which helped offset the unpleasantness of the small).

So I find myself wondering what this room in which I have so many student memories will feel like as I walk into it as a teacher. Will those student memories impinge? Will I form more teacher memories about this space because of so many existing student memories? Or will I be unable to remember the space as a teacher and only retain the student memories? I suppose I'll just have to wait for the spring term to see.

Do you ever get used to this?

This week has been tough. It's only Wednesday and I've had four rejections already. Two job applications, a funding application, and an article.

At least they're varied...

While I've certainly gotten better at taking the disappointment of rejection over the years, they still sting, and when they come in clusters like this, they make me afraid to open my email or look in the mailbox because I just don't know how many more I can take.

At least when they're spread out, I'm bummed out for a while but then the quotidian intrudes and I forget, at least until the next one. But when they cluster like this, there's no recovery time between them and I find myself doubting the advisability of all kinds of things I'd otherwise never question.

So I'm wondering, does it get easier? Or do I just look forward to periods of disappointment interspersed with periods of normalcy? Just thinking I should prepare myself or something...

If only my students had the problems I'm having

Source: CAPL

This has been the week of serious editing to convert chapter and article length pieces of writing into conference length. And, boy, has it been hard.

Both conference papers are presentations of large bodies of work, which means I've got 20-25 pages that have to be trimmed down to less than 10. That's hard. My students complain it's hard to meet the minimum page requirements on assignments, but right now I wish I had that problem.

Cutting all those words and all that argument (which is, of course, brilliant) is a challenge. Cut too much and suddenly you don't make sense. Cut too little and you have to deliver the paper at machine-gun pace so that both you and your audience are exhausted by the end of it and didn't understand a word.

I think I've done it, but the only way to know for sure after hours upon hours of editing is to stick both in the proverbial desk drawer for a week and then look at them again. Here's hoping a week from now I won't be panicking because they didn't turn out as well as I think!