Reorganization

Today I took some time to reorganize my (computer) files, which were in a terrible state.

Back when I was in graduate school, I dumped all notes, drafts, etc., for a particular course into a folder labeled with that course's name. This system broke down a bit once I got to the dissertation research, when virtually everything got dumped into a folder titled "Diss." Eventually this acquired some subfolders ("Drafts" and "Comments", for example). All the research, writing and note-taking I've done since then have not been organized systematically. Sometimes I made new folders, sometimes I shoved files into pre-existing folders, sometimes I left files in the main "Research" folder. 

The result of all this is that it has gotten increasingly difficult to find stuff, and every time I look for some particular notes, I end up searching in half a dozen places on the hard drive to find what I'm looking for.

I hope that I've licked that problem going forward. The Research folder now has subfolders for Writing, Research Materials, and Secondary materials, among others, with appropriate further subdivisions. I sincerely hope that making it easier to find research materials will make the time I have for research more productive, and that clarity in organization reflects clarity in thought. We shall see.

Transition

I've been wanting to write more about transitioning from contingent faculty to tenure-track faculty. The thing I'm most conscious of, though, is that it's difficult to bring up details about my transition without telling so much that I'm easily identifiable. I already think that a determined reader could figure out who and where I am, and I'm not sure how faculty and administrators at my college would perceive my blog.

So I keep finding that there are things I don't want to talk about: I don't want to vent my occasional frustrations with students; I don't want to talk an ongoing administrative decision; I don't want to talk about some quirks that make my college distinctive.

What, then, can I say about this transition?

On the one hand, it hasn't been that difficult. Having several years of contingent teaching experience is an advantage in planning and preparing courses. I have materials I can use; I have syllabi and lesson plans I can adapt for this new setting. I know what kind of assignments I like to give and how I like to grade them. All of that experience serves me well.

On the other hand, I worry more about how I fit in. As a lecturer, I didn't stress much about such things. Now I worry about things like: is my grading too lenient? am I going to get a reputation as an "easy" or "soft" professor? Should I socialize more with other faculty? How important is it that I attend talks, performances, and other events on campus?

I still struggle, too, with the issues of mindset that I mentioned here. I still need to remind myself, periodically, that administrative issues being discussed really are pertinent to me. As a lecturer, I often thought to myself, "The outcome of that decision won't affect me, and no one here cares what I think anyway." But here, I am new, but not irrelevant. If I comment on an issue, it is likely that the comments will be taken as seriously as anyone else's.

So those are my current thoughts, midway through the fall. I have also actually been thinking about writing, but that's for another post. 

Hanging in there

I'm taking a moment's break from grading jail this weekend for an update.

• The student I alluded to back in this post seems to be getting along ok. She stops by my office regularly for clarification on issues that confuse her, but the very questions she asks demonstrates that she does understand the basics. 
• I have another non-Christian student in my class on the Reformation whose outsider's perspective is really refreshing; he's not afraid to say things that challenge Christian students' ideas of what's normal, and that livens up discussion immensely.
• I'm not entirely happy with how I've organized the second half of the Renaissance-Reformation survey course, but we'll see how it goes; I'll teach it again in the spring, so I'll have opportunities to tweak it very soon.

My job requires that I teach every day; this is a very teaching-focused liberal arts college and essentially everyone has an every-day schedule. This is definitely been a shock to the system after the last couple years of part-time adjunct teaching. As tiring as that was, I was usually able to arrange to teach only on two or three, or at most four, days, and had some time during the week to recharge and work on other things. Being in the office and classroom every day is wearing. I need to figure out how to carve out some time mid-week to refresh myself, but I haven't quite managed yet...

Berks 2011 CFP

The call for proposals for the next Berkshire Conference of Women Historians is up here. Also as seen here and here.

I attended the last Berks conference in 2008, and had a really excellent experience. Good scholarship, good opportunities to meet people, and much less fraught with professional angst and status-seeking than many other conferences. I'd also especially like to encourage medievalists to consider participating. It is easy for large conferences to seem dominated by the modernists, and I think it's important for scholars of the ancient, medieval, and early modern world to be visible participants. There is a lot of time yet to think about submission, as the deadline is March 1.

No prior knowledge assumed?

This week I was talking to an international student about my 100-level history class. The class is a pretty broad survey of European history between c. 1300 and 1700. In theory, the class requires no prerequisites. But in talking to this student, I realized that isn't quite true. 

I do assume, when teaching an introductory class, that my students have had some history in high school. I assume that they've gotten a basic narrative of western history, that they've heard of feudalism, the Renaissance, and Martin Luther. My class is usually designed to take apart paradigms that I believe to be familiar, and to interrogate assumptions about what, for example, "the Renaissance" means.

This student, however, is Asian, and has had very little exposure to European history. It's kind of startling to me to think about how to teach in a way that genuinely did not assume any prior knowledge of the period being taught. How would I teach a whole class full of such students? I would really need to rethink the way I introduce all kinds of topics. With only one student in this situation, I'm less inclined to make major changes, but it's worthwhile to keep the lack of familiarity with the topic in mind. Perhaps I should even make fewer assumptions about what my American students may know.

Complaint

Why, pray tell, does the latest version of MS Word have separate buttons labelled "Insert Footnote" and "Insert Citation"? Since I (and I suspect, most college professors) use the terms somewhat interchangeably, this is confusing. And I frankly don't understand what the program is doing when it "inserts citation"--it's not actually putting in a footnote. 

I've been fielding a lot of student questions about citation lately.

Is it possible I might one day do research again?

My new job is time-intensive, but yesterday I managed to get a little ahead on class prep, and today I had some time to think. I wrote up an abstract and made some lists:

goals for the year

materials to get from the library

ideas I might want to pursue in the future

I keep most of such notes on the computer, and I have a terrible time keeping track of such stuff. On the list of goals, in fact, is "for the love of God, reorganize the files so I can find things." My system of electronic file-keeping broke down once I moved beyond my dissertation materials, and whenever I try to find an idea or reference I wrote down, I end up searching in five different folders, opening and closing a dozen different files before I find what I'm looking for. 

I think I have a pretty manageable agenda for the year, and we'll see how things go.

Now back to paper grading and class prep.