2020-2021 Preceptorship

Well!

 I applied for -- and received -- a preceptorship from the U of A Writing Program to help train and mentor incoming graduate students, who will teach English 101 and English 102 online. Initially, I didn't even think of applying. More than enough things currently on my plate, you know, including teaching sections of Honors module for incoming freshman in the Fall, but I applied when our WP director suggested the idea to me. Overall, since our GTAs will be teaching the program's pre-designed online courses, which I know inside and out, I was pretty sure that I'd get the position. Still, it's quite nice . . . and I'm slowly growing more excited about the prospect.**

 So, for the rest of August, I'll help prepare our Orientation Week for graduate teaching assistants -- the first time, in fact, I've ever been on the other side of one of these things. Teaching everything through Zoom, though, is disappointing. I'd love the energy of meeting all our new GTAs during orientation -- it would have reminded me of my own graduate students days. Likewise, it was disappointing how my Directed Self-Placement advising (my other summer job) happened over Zoom as well.*** But, once the year starts, I'll lead a small group of GTAs and mentor them from week-to-week as they learn the ropes of teaching online for the first time.

 All in all, this summer has been crazy busy. Besides my normal research and writing, the Directed Self-Placement position, and now the preceptorship, I'm also teaching my online Monsters course. No rest for the weary!
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**In order to balance out my schedule, though, I had to drop my two Honors modules, which is a bummer.

 *** In the Directed Self-Placement, we simply gave incoming freshmen advice on which Writing Program courses to take. Easy position mostly handled through email, but we did -- or were supposed to have -- several in-personal orientation sessions for students who wanted facetime. COVID-19 really sucks.

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