It's crazy talk, this idea of going to school full time in the Fall. I'm currently in the bliss of summer and feeling like I can just DO IT in autumn -- just continue my new teaching career with my four different subjects and carry a full grad school load -- but I must remind myself that this is not unlike the feeling I had in the Spring, when I thought that over the summer I would just DO IT and take my one evening class and get some PDE hours and eat healthy everyday and do lots of sightseeing and take photos of things other than dwarf hamsters.
The half-pint of Strawberry Cheesecake ice cream in the freezer with the 500 or so dwarf hamster photos taken in the past couple of weeks will be coming up on your bullshit radar shortly.
So, no, I shouldn't take three grad classes. It was my very first thought when I got my teaching schedule for next year, and I should trust the voice of the part of the brain that was actually in the classroom and remembers what that was like, as opposed to the part of the brain currently "preparing" for the new school year by artfully cutting the edges of Far Side cartoons in order to better decorate next year's classroom.
But, here's the woe: Which class should I drop?
I have to keep two classes so I can get another sinkhole student loan (just in case), but one has to go. Which one?
The choices are as follows:
- A class in a time period that I like, but I don't care for the author or the genre on which the professor will be focusing. The professor is said to be nice, lecture-oriented, and he doesn't make you do group work.
- A class in a time period and genre I strongly dislike, featuring authors I also strongly dislike. However, the professor is universally said to be stellar, one of those "it doesn't matter what he's teaching - take his class!" types.
- A class in a time period and genre I really like, featuring an author I like, although said author is much more difficult to read and research than the above choices, and the amount of criticism on his work makes it intimidating to form any kind of fresh opinion. Meanwhile, the only comment anyone makes on the professor (online, anyway) is that he "preaches" more than he "teaches."
I don't know what to do. I'm not writing a master's thesis, so finding subject matter "in my field" is unimportant. I can say with confidence that, if I ever do write a dissertation, it won't connect in any way to the classes above.
Cost of textbooks should never be the dealbreaker, but if they were: $23 for the first class, probably $35-50 for the second class (depends on Half.com), and I already have a usable text for the third class. (Cheaper texts seem to be the shining difference between undergrad and grad classes, so far.)
All classes are equally convenient to my schedule.
So, picture it this way: You have no time for grad school and no patience for unhappiness, but you have to take two of the above three classes. What do you choose? What do you choose?
Take #2! That's what you're paying for - a good professor. Everything else you can learn on your own. Why pay for a nothing class taught by a nothing prof?
Posted by: Reese | 21 July 2005 at 06:31 AM