Thursday, May 18, 2006

New oceans

Back in August, before school started and as my blog was in its nascent stage, I posted about why I was making this big change in my life--leaving my comfortable job and my great friends and such.

Now I have finished my first year of grad school, and I feel very good about the experience. I still immensely miss my friends from Minnesota, but I understand that geography does not destroy relationships. The same is true of the friends from other times -- high school, college, etc. With my best friends, when we get together or when we talk, it is like no time or space ever divided us. My time in Minnesota has left an indelible stamp on my life, and I know that wherever I end up, I will always return for visits. (And one of the reasons I love having a blog is that it is an easy way to keep in touch with important people scattered by geography and circumstance.)

Academically, grad school has been good for me. NIU is by no means the most challenging or elite of schools, but I have had some excellent professors and some very interesting classes. I have developed some new academic interests (film theory, urban studies), and I have broadened and deepened previous academic interests (pop culture, 20th Century literature). Not all of my classes have been so enlightening, like the goofy "bibliographic research" class, or as one of my friends calls it, English 666. In addition, I have more or less enjoyed the research and writing aspect of grad school. It is heartening to realize that I am still a pretty good writer -- after all, I even won a department writing award last month for one of my essays ($500!). Most of all, I just like the feeling of being in school again.

And on a social and personal level, grad school has been good for me, too. My longtime friend Jake, who just finished his first year of the M.F.A. program at the University of Minnesota, has also recently posted about the end of the first year. He has this to say:
"I expected to make friends in grad school, but I never could have guessed I’d successfully connect with such a large number of people . . . all in the same boat (more or less). Nor was I prepared for the sheer ease and quickness with which we’d become comfortable with each other, and figure each other out."
And since I could not have said it better myself, I won't. I have made great friends here at NIU. As I have said many times, DeKalb does not offer everything I want in a town, but it is a step.

My future is still uncertain. As I wrote in my blog entry at the beginning of the year, I am not sure what the next step will be. Right now, I very much miss teaching. I will be teaching First Year Composition as a T.A. next year, so that may help fill that void a bit, but I do not think it will be the same feeling I get from being a high school teacher.

We'll see. My brother told me that in order to get out of a rut, you need to take a giant leap. I am in mid-air now, and it feels pretty good.

12 Comments:

At 7:12 PM, Blogger Jason posited...

So do you think you'll like being a T.A. at college better than high school teaching?

I can't imagine teaching high schoolers could top teaching college students, although those in "First Year Composition" sound like they're in there to fulfill requirements.

 
At 7:33 PM, Blogger Maya Kuehn posited...

i took a composition class last year, and i enjoyed it a lot, for the first month. it was intense, 3 essays, 3 rewrites each, and biweekly individual meetings with the professor. hope yours is a bit more low maintenance...

 
At 7:36 PM, Blogger CoachDub posited...

Well, not to knock my own school, Maya, but the students in your comp class at Northwestern are in a different stratosphere than the freshmen at NIU.

Jason, a lot of my teaching will be very prescribed, following a very specific program. It is an interesting composition program, with a basis in pop culture, but I had so much freedom when I was teaching high school. I was also spoiled by having all the smarties.

 
At 8:03 PM, Blogger Tom posited...

im assuming you dont mean the candy... what am i saying, you had me in class, of course youre not.

 
At 8:10 PM, Blogger CoachDub posited...

Of course, Tom.

But in college, if the beer at a party was especially low-quality, sometimes we dropped Smarties into our cups.

 
At 9:54 PM, Blogger CoachDub posited...

And by "parties" of course I mean "study sessions," and by "beer" of course I mean "root beer" (and/or sarsaparilla). And by "cups," I still mean "cups."

 
At 12:20 AM, Blogger Jason posited...

The number one concern at study sessions is, of course, sarsparilla quality.

 
At 9:31 AM, Blogger Maya Kuehn posited...

what did the smarties do to this hypothetical beer? i don't understand... plus, a pop culture comp class would be way cool. i would take it.

 
At 9:34 AM, Blogger Maya Kuehn posited...

oh, and you'd be surprised about the students in skom's intermediate comp 205... i was the only one who understood that mark twain wasn't entirely sincere in his writings, among other things. it was a very strange experience, actually, reading my peers' essays and being like "wow, you are NOT a very talented writer." it was the first class where i was the "go-to girl" for the professor, and where i realized that northwestern wasn't all that scary.

 
At 10:10 AM, Blogger Josh posited...

thats because a lot of people who are good at memorizing formulae and equations are bad at actually interpreting information in a biased way.

 
At 11:05 AM, Blogger CoachDub posited...

Maya, in addition to the fun of watching the Smarties dissolve, they added some fun new flavor.

And I do understand what you and Josh mean about some of the writers. I can usually spot the "math/science" mind by the stilted nature of their writing. (Not always, mind you, since some people have well-rounded minds. But you know the type . . . )

 
At 1:10 PM, Blogger Jason posited...

Let set(a) == ALL people q("Math/Science-minded")
Let set(b) == ALL people q("Artistic-minded")
Marker A
If person(1,0,n) == set(a)
AND
If person(1,0,n) == set(b)
person -> set(c)
increment n
Loop A
qualify set(c) -> q("well-rounded minds")

At least, that's what I think.

 

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