Future English 110 teachers.
I'll start my blog post with a flashback to August 2008...
With two weeks until my move to Ohio I had mostly cleared out my old office, trashed the empty coke cans, cleared the music off my hard drive, and packed up hree years worth of pictures, posters, and conference trinkets in case I ever had my own office again.
My apartment was packed, but not cleaned. I was in the process of a break-up, but I had a new aptartment, a U-haul rented, and plenty of good-bye dinners on the schedule.
The only clues about my new life were two packets, one from OSU and full of graduate student paperwork, and the other a textbook and a letter from Scott DeWitt of the First Year Writing Project. I stared at the book and the new letter hoping that it would provide me some insight into my new life, but I only felt a little overwhelmed.
I thought I'd start off the blog with an invitation for you to post. Where are you and what part of the transition are you in? While the majority of you are new to OSU and Columbus, there are students coming off of fellowship and new graduate students coming from OSU undergraduate.
Welcome.
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2 weeks ago
3 comments:
I've been in Columbus for a year now, and I just completed (or, rather, am in the process of completing as I type this...) the first year of my PhD on a fellowship. Fellowships are awesome, and OSU is very nice in offering them to new students. However, being on fellowship means I've spent a whole year not teaching! I'm a bit of an oddity, in that I came to English first as a teacher, and I'm just now figuring out the rest of it. I taught middle school English for a few years and taught composition as I worked on my M.A. So, being out of the classroom this past year has been...uncomfortable for me. I've just felt unbalanced, if that makes any sense.
So, to answer Rachel's question about "where I am at right now," I am hovering somewhere between excitement and terror. I am generally jazzed to be part of OSU's esteemed FYW program and to meet all my cool students. But I also feel scared--What will students be like here, especially as compared to the students at the open-admissions institution I previously taught writing at? Do I remember how to teach?(Yes, I really worry about this!) And how can I possibly wrap up my summer coursework and then immediately start the pre-quarter workshop without my head exploding?
So that's me and all my anxieties. Can't wait to hear from and meet all you other folks! :)
This post really resonates with me. In the last week, I have driven to Columbus and back to find an apartment, moved both myself and my boyfriend out of our apartments in Madison, WI and into two wooden U-Box We-Haul boxes, and moved back to my parents' house in Milwaukee with one suitcase and a backpack.
Now I'm in the same state of mind that you were a year ago. I have the textbook and two emails from Scott DeWitt, but my packet of OSU info is in a box inside the bigger U-Box box. And this morning I received an email from the graduate division requesting a final transcript from UW-Madison, emphasizing that my admission is still provisional. (I thought I got away with nobody seeing my terrible Shakespeare grade from my last semester.)
A week from Sunday I will finally leave for Columbus, but I won't be into my apartment until the middle of the first week of the workshop. I'm definitely excited, but I can't help but think, "Is this really real?"
Oh Rachel, I feel you deep girl. Ooh, that sounded awkwardly sexual...but I stand by it.
I am leaving Los Angeles and flying to Columbus on Saturday morning. I shipped an air mattress ahead of me because I don't have the resources to procure a bed yet. I am terrible at adjusting to timezone differences. I am thoroughly overwhelmed by the notion that 20 or so faces will be looking to me in little more than a month for knowledge, guidance, and care. I am also very excited, despite the nerves. I can't wait to begin anew, to set down my roots on an alien planet. I have never lived outside of Southern California, never lived so far away from home. It's an exhilarating, maddening change of scenery, but a necessary one.
Mostly, I am ready for the next step, whatever that may hold. I am only a few months out of UCLA, but in that time I have been restless, bored, desperately in need of something to do. I suspect such complaints will soon be a distant memory, replaced by new ones, ones I cannot even anticipate. Hooray for change though, it keeps the blood flowing, the puddles clean, and the mind in need of something to obfuscate such blistering newness!
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