First Lecture Post

Earlier this week I gave my first ever lecture to the class I TA for: Early America and the Atlantic World. The day's topic was tobacco and the Chesapeake economy, which I specifically chose for few reasons:

1. I've always enjoyed the history of Jamestown.

2. It made me think of the movie, The New World (2005), which is one of my favorites.

3. To me, the Chesapeake has always been iconic when discussing the origins of the 13 colonies.

As I'm sure many TAs are, I was a bit over-ambitious with my lecture. I packed in TONS of information because I was afraid of ending too early. I discussed:

The Chesapeake settlement, both tobacco booms, tobacco production and population growth, origins of slavery, tobacco uses, and popular culture.*

Overall, my lecture went very well. I made an accompanying powerpoint presentation and one thing I did that the students liked was instead of showing a portrait of John Rolfe, I showed a picture of Christian Bale portraying John Rolfe from The New World. My line of logic: people tend to forget portraits, but they will always remember Christian Bale!

VIRGINIA'S HERO!

My professor shook my hand and said I did an excellent job and then he emailed me again later to tell me that I did very well and that he was proud of me. This always feels so good to hear. It's really the best source of validation.

I asked the students to give me an evaluation and the general consensus was that they liked my powerpoint and the discussion on popular culture, but I spoke too quickly and that made it hard to take notes. I expected that to be my criticism as I have a tendency to be a fast talker, especially when I get slightly nervous. But I know with practice I will get better at that.

All in all, very successful for a first lecture!

Daily Advice:

Don't overprepare, less is more, always remember discussion questions, and SLOW DOWN.

*The tobacco uses and popular culture bits were my own personal touch to the subject. The professor is an economic historian so I had to model his lectures. However, since I am a cultural historian, I wanted to make the lecture distinctly my own.

News/Illness coping/Review sessions

It's been longer than I thought since my last update. Oops! Sadly, I have just been busy.

So here's some grad school bragging for you: I'm going to be presenting at the Phi Alpha Theta Biennial conference this January down in San Diego. I'm not going to go into any real detail on what my paper topic is but to be vague, it's on antebellum slavery. I'm pretty excited as this will be my first conference. It will be great experience and networking...not to mention it will pad my C.V./Ph.D. applications nicely.

I have been sick the past week. Nothing major - it's just a cold. It's a pain getting sick at all during the semester because I prefer not to miss any school, especially since one of my classes requires a 3-page analysis for a missed class. That's not something I want to do when I'm sick. So I just bucked up and went to class on Wednesday night. I didn't participate as much as I usually do, but I performed well enough. To paraphrase Woody Allen, 80% of success is just showing up.

Thursday was a furlough day for the class I T.A. for. I offered up my services to run a study/review session since the midterm is tomorrow and considering some of the quizzes lately, the students kind of needed it. My throat was sore and my head ached something awful but I made a commitment, dammit! Overall, I think it went well enough. What's nice about a 400-level course is that I don't have to hold hands nearly as much as I did for the 100-level that I T.A.ed last semester. I outlined on the board while the students did most of the work. My role was merely to guide. When I run review sessions I make it very clear that my role is help, not to repeat lectures because that is simply a waste of time.

So in lieu of going into too much boring detail, here's a break down of how to run a good review session:

1. Show up on time.

2. Make it clear right away that you are not repeating lectures.

2a. Ask if anything from the lecture notes need to be cleared up or further explained. There is a difference.

3. Go over only the pertinent information since time is limited.

4. Admit if you can't answer something. That's what the professor's email is for.

Daily Advice:

Use Purell, drink Emergen-C. If you get sick anyways, take a cold pill, buck up, and shut up.*

*I stole that from the movie Zombieland. It's awesome. Go see it.