student blues

[rosasericea]

One of my favorite things has to be when I see reviews of English professors online where students whine about being expected to read...in 200-level literature courses. I've taught high school English here, so I know that many of the students we send on to college are totally unprepared for any level of collegiate-level reading (I had seniors complain to me about having to read short stories more than half a page in length and legitimately lack the stamina to do so when their mewling came to nothing, never having been expected to read anything remotely rigorous in their lives), but it's still staggering how vehement and offended these kids are. They cannot believe the nerve of these professors, expecting them to do HOURS of reading in an AMERICAN LITERATURE class. And not just some of the reading--you have to do all of it and then write papers using legitimate citations that demonstrate you not only read, but understood the texts and can apply analytical concepts to them?!? This is probably why so many instructors use Norton anthologies here, which I cannot stand. But if you can't reasonably expect your students to read a novel in its entirety, why not?

Anyway, I'm taking three English courses through the community colleges near me in the spring because this Brush with my Mortality has motivated me to pursue graduate English, something I've avoided since before I even completed my bachelor's. I have a master's, but it's in teaching. I was always scared that I'd wash out, be intimidated, etc. in a graduate program, so I refused to try. (There's something in there about the personality disorder that I now work very hard on with a very persistent and patient therapist, but that's for another day.) But fear of death without doing something I truly, madly, deeply love has galvanized me. (None of the possible explanations for my issues thus far has actually been a terminal one, but I always get scared of the worst possible outcomes because, you know, catastrophizing.) I'm very excited about one of them because it's a Gothic Lit class and the professor has Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber and CARMILLA on the list. And the actual comics for The Crow. And Radcliffe's Sicilian Romance. It's not just a Brontë/Shelley fest, which is really exciting. Frankenstein is included, which is fine, but I love that she's exploring modern treatments of the gothic and multiple formats, not just The Novel. (Plus Carter is one of my favorite favorites, so, bonus!)

I didn't really make connections with my faculty in undergrad for many reasons, not the least of which was that I was undergoing a profound mental breakdown during most of that time and transferred between five schools before finally graduating) and my grades were not spectacular, so I need to make some now as well as get back into the swing of academic writing.( I got my teaching degree with a 4. 0GPA, though, so I have improved my study habits since undergrad, at least.) That's easier and much less expensive to do at the community college level than it is to do via the graduate non-degree/student-at-large method. I definitely can't afford to pay over a thousand dollars out of pocket to take one class! My GRE scores will be good--they were when I took it the first time, but that was too long ago to use them--I think, so I do stand a chance of getting into a not-super-elite program.  My big dream is to teach community college English anyway, so a terminal master's would be enough to get me there. I'm also certified to teach high school English and (next year) ESL, so I don't necessarily have to worry about making a living in the nightmare landscape of adjunct-land. I don't harbor any illusions about full-time tenure track faculty life--this is just something I've always wanted to pursue, and now I'm able to support myself no matter how it turns out, which makes me a little grateful, actually, that I took such a roundabout route.

Comments

[highlyeccentric]

This post delights me, as someone with a recent PhD in English. It's good to remember that people do genuinely like and value this stuff, you know?

Also, given I'm trying to maintain triple career angles in ESL, research academia and teaching-focused academia, ALL of which I need more training to level up to 'stable job' in, I applaud your sensible career thoughts. Honestly I'm thinking I might really like high school teaching, but my route to being able to afford to retrain will have to involve at least five more years of mixed ESL/academia.

Imma grant you access, I reckon you may have interesting things to say about my next year worth of mad career choices ;).

[rosasericea]

Ah! Congratulations on finishing the doctorate! And yes, it's always nice to hear that people do love the subject. Having taught high school and heard, in various whining tones, how boring, useless and unimportant it is, I always relish positive signs.

High school teaching is a very different beast from higher ed, and I always recommend that people get a feel for what the secondary school life is like before diving in. It was a rough shock for many of my cohort-mates when they first started observations (let alone student teaching), as they hadn't been in a high school since they graduated and our memories really insulate us from those experiences. If you're already familiar with life among the adolescents and you like high school curricula, yay! ESL helps, too, since depending on where you are located (in the US, at least--I have no idea how this plays out anywhere else) the secondary English job market can be very competitive. I feel like it may become less so in coming years as fewer people seem to be choosing English as an undergrad major. I tutored college English students for awhile, and it was heartbreaking to hear them deride the humanities because you couldn't "get a job doing that." Sigh. I could rant about that forever, so I'm cutting myself off!

Thank you--looking forward to reading about it!!

[highlyeccentric]

I found my ESL teaching course a big shock after university teaching! I would have said I hated high school curricula, but I hated them *because they weren't challenging enough for me as a teen*. I'm now coming to realise how incredibly /useful/ they were. If I were starting again from scratch I think I'd pick history and maths over English, but with the degrees I have already, history+english it would be. Which are definitely not the most in-demand subjects in my home state in Aus, so, yeah. The ESL qualifications would be something I'd lean into heavily.

Retraining looks like quite a ways off, though. I've got this year of ESL teaching, then a research thing for a few years, and then I think if I really want to prioritise high school, I'll try to get onto the Korean govt english teaching program, for high school classroom experience with my ESL qualifications.

[rosasericea]

Mmhmm--The more exposure I get to high school curricula from other places and to the student work it leads to, the more I realize how useful mine was and how important it was to the work I'd do later. It might have been boring and frustrating at times, but it laid a foundation that many students I encounter where I live now enter college without. (Imagine starting at a university without ever having read a novel in its entirety or learning to write an essay that wasn't a personal narrative...)

I'm getting more curious about teaching "abroad," especially as Things here continue along their current trajectory. More than that, though, I'm 35 and the furthest I've been from the middle of the US is the Northwest Territories in Canada. I'd like to change that. It's a lifelong dream, and I'd imagine it would certainly make me a better teacher.

[gwydion]

That course souds really fun and I'm excited for you going back to college and wish you the best with all your plans.

[rosasericea]

Thanks! Me, too!