Saturday, October 31, 2009

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.

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