Dr. Rosalyn | The End is Neigh
I am approximately 96 hours away from being done with the bulk of my summer teaching. Monday is somewhat of a free day in that we tie up a heavily discussion based class with a movie and some food. Different vibe in the Psychology of Hip Hop course this summer but I still had fun and I had gear for most of the early classes so I was happy. Tuesday is the final exam in statistics. Always a high stress course, for the most part they are doing well and I learned again to not get bogged down in minutiae as it would just derail them too. I will give a quick pep talk before we begin but at the tend of that I will have hopefully only those tests to grade for the moment. Two days later grades will be due but I always give myself a twenty-four hour window to be done in case our LMS legitimately ate an assignment a student things I just didn't grade. After that, I just have a few students in research and on internship to monitor while I finish pecking at my dossier file. I'll get back to that.
Mom is healing well. She's in town in rehab which helps me out because going an hour each way to see her was killing me but was a better option than spending money each weekend for hotels or staying on random couches. Plus even though I don't see her as long I can see her each day and talk to her when she's not in sessions working on her strength and activities of daily living. She's kicking butt so that she can come home and I'm doing my best to encourage her so that she can do just that. I've got good support from colleagues and family so that helps as well. And I likely mentioned that the long hours in her room while she slept allowed me to peck away at my dossier materials.
I may have worked backwards in this process but when I started working on my dossier I went back through all of the things that I allegedly needed to put in there, figured out how to easily compile them, and start with the fancy trappings not the major narratives. Since I'm a clinical assistant professor I do not have to create a research document but I did have to figure out where to put the research I have done--it went into teaching and how I work with students. I've presented with a few and others have used that research to get into graduate programs. I need to write up three papers with those students but I would also like to sleep and allow at least some of my remaining black hair to remain that way. I went after my executive statement next because I had a good draft of that that just needed to be reformatted, updated and spruced up. I alternated between my service statement and teaching statements for the last few weeks as things popped up in each arena. I've done a lot of service as most faculty of color do but breaking it down into the right groups and explaining why it mattered too more energy than I thought it might. I was kind of in love with my teaching statement until it started to look like chapter one of my dissertation. So instead I removed a section and put it in a new document which links back to the primary teaching statement. That allowed me to do the thing I struggle with the most within the main document: talk about why I am a good teacher and my motivation for each of the changes, how those tie into my teaching philosophy and provide some evidence for each point. This whole thing isn't due until September I know this. My August will be a hot mess though so I'd really just like to be tweaking things at best by then. If I can step away from it for a while and come back to edit next month then I'll feel better. I won't say I'm done but I'm well ahead of pace for where I was with my third year review.
Keep your fingers crossed that sleep is plentiful after Thursday, mom is back home and being a problem soon, and that this time next year I will have secured promotion and making sure my graduate students are having good placements. Enjoy your summers fellow academics.
Mom is healing well. She's in town in rehab which helps me out because going an hour each way to see her was killing me but was a better option than spending money each weekend for hotels or staying on random couches. Plus even though I don't see her as long I can see her each day and talk to her when she's not in sessions working on her strength and activities of daily living. She's kicking butt so that she can come home and I'm doing my best to encourage her so that she can do just that. I've got good support from colleagues and family so that helps as well. And I likely mentioned that the long hours in her room while she slept allowed me to peck away at my dossier materials.
I may have worked backwards in this process but when I started working on my dossier I went back through all of the things that I allegedly needed to put in there, figured out how to easily compile them, and start with the fancy trappings not the major narratives. Since I'm a clinical assistant professor I do not have to create a research document but I did have to figure out where to put the research I have done--it went into teaching and how I work with students. I've presented with a few and others have used that research to get into graduate programs. I need to write up three papers with those students but I would also like to sleep and allow at least some of my remaining black hair to remain that way. I went after my executive statement next because I had a good draft of that that just needed to be reformatted, updated and spruced up. I alternated between my service statement and teaching statements for the last few weeks as things popped up in each arena. I've done a lot of service as most faculty of color do but breaking it down into the right groups and explaining why it mattered too more energy than I thought it might. I was kind of in love with my teaching statement until it started to look like chapter one of my dissertation. So instead I removed a section and put it in a new document which links back to the primary teaching statement. That allowed me to do the thing I struggle with the most within the main document: talk about why I am a good teacher and my motivation for each of the changes, how those tie into my teaching philosophy and provide some evidence for each point. This whole thing isn't due until September I know this. My August will be a hot mess though so I'd really just like to be tweaking things at best by then. If I can step away from it for a while and come back to edit next month then I'll feel better. I won't say I'm done but I'm well ahead of pace for where I was with my third year review.
Keep your fingers crossed that sleep is plentiful after Thursday, mom is back home and being a problem soon, and that this time next year I will have secured promotion and making sure my graduate students are having good placements. Enjoy your summers fellow academics.
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