BackStage

Yeah, I haven’t been around a lot. Basically, the semester started, my new class started (social psychology), and the job market started. Oh, and there is that pesky dissertation.

I fell into a funk. Not hearing back from the job market (still haven’t), spending ALL OF MY TIME sending out job apps and prepping for class, not getting my dissertation done — I was an unhappy ABD (surely, the only one -ha). I could go all social psychological on your asses and start talking about role transitions, and Thoits, and emotional deviance, and ossification of identities, on becoming a teacher, on losing my researcher identity — instead I’ll just say that I sunk into a deep depression and it seemed that something had to go. It ended up being blogging and reading blogs. In the end, BIG MISTAKE.

I am now facing spring semester teaching another new prep (still Race and Ethnicity). I still have a dissertation going nowhere. I still am on that depressing job market where it seems that I’m too research for teaching colleges and not enough research for R1s. But, I’m coming back to blogging. Why you ask? Glad you did.

Thanks to so many bloggers, my R&E syllabus is finally done after 2 weeks of little sleep and intense consentration on it (of course, I’ve been working on it for over a year, but the formal work is now complete).

• Thanks to Jessie at RacismReview, not only am I bringing in the blog to the class, but I got some GREAT advice on how to bring in documentaries. And which ones to include (see here and here).
• Thanks to Olderwoman at Scatterplot, I had access to her syllabus and course materials that made me re-evaluate content and gave me some ideas on ways to make lectures more dynamic. I also adopted your use of journals, but changed it to fit me more.
• Thanks to Belle, I had a great syllabus on critical race theory which broadened my horizons.
• Thanks to Dave, I had another syllabus which provided me with one text and an idea on how to structure the class — I was having issues.
• And, of course I run into danger of forgetting people as Jenn at WITW points out. Also remember some great points from Anomie.

The result? A much better syllabus then I could have ever written solely from the support of instructors at my U. Not only did these materials help, but also all the discussions about how to teach did as well. I now have a course designed that brings in documentaries, literature, comedy, music, and academic readings. It is a syllabus that I’m pretty proud of. We’ll see how it works out, but the first time is always a trial anyway. In the end, the syllabus is uniquely fitted to me and my style of teaching, but it is so much richer from this input. Thank you all.

Now I gots to figure out how to give back.