Today I have been sorting through the last 5-6 years' worth of notes. Since I have to pay to ship these across the country, everything unnecessary must go.
Notes relevant to research I'll keep; likewise copies of articles, which I keep either for reference or because I may assign them in a class someday.
But do I really need to keep all my printed-out class notes? When the same files are on my hard drive? I tossed the ones for classes I don't anticipate teaching in the near future (or, perhaps, ever again), but I'm undecided about the others.
Notes for graduate classes can also be purged, I suspect, especially since I haven't really looked at most of them in ages.
Terrifying discovery: my senior thesis. I'm afraid to look at it too closely.
Edited to add:
I did throw away student evaluations of my grad school teaching. I've taught my own classes for years now, no one cares how well I led discussion sections at the age of 25. Evaluations for my own older courses may go, too--I'm undecided.
3 comments:
I'd toss anything you have a copy of on your computer, but just make sure you have a backup first! (speaks from painful experience). Good luck with the move.
I'd also toss anything on the computer, with a good backup. I'd also toss articles, since you can always get them again from J-Stor or another online database. Maybe compile a list of titles, with a note for which class(es) or research each one is for? I'd also keep some of your older evals, maybe from one course for every semester - just in case. Schools can vary so much in terms of study culture, teaching ethos, etc., that in case your first semester throws you a curve, you can have evals of earlier semesters to reasssure you (and maybe your new dept) that you are a capable teacher! (I hope this *doesn't* happen, but I've known a couple of people it did happen to, and it's better to be prepared!).
I'd get rid of the paper copies of anything that's on the computer. As for post-grad school course evals: does your department or library have a copier w/scanner function you could use? Slap 'em in the top-feeder, one class at a time, get one pdf per class sent to your e-mail account, store 'em on your hard drive (until you've built up a couple years' worth at your new home), and cheerfully shred the hard copies.
Unless, of course, there's one you really, really want to save. My friend Jeff has one posted on his office wall: "This class is great. It's even better when I'm stoned."
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