In Which I Liken My Professional Life to Facebook. Help Me Now...

Sing, swing, savor the sting

As she severs you, Madame Guillotine

Slice, come Paradise

You’ll be smitten with Madame Guillotine

So here I am with precious few days left to get a post in this January! January – the month that went by a lot faster than expected. I’m back in NYC and rather glad to be back into a new semester as of last Monday. I can only handle unstructured time for a few weeks before it wears on me.

My vision of the upcoming semester changed about six times in the course of two weeks. First the news came that my elective class was to be canceled. So I chose a backup option… which also got canceled. The end result is an independent study, which I’m actually looking forward to greatly. I’ll be reading with my advisor, Professor Rosenblatt, who described one of the potential texts as “a little piece of candy that melts in your mouth.” This promises to be a good semester.

Besides the changing class schedule, so did my research assistant job change a few times. They shuffled me around in a circle and ultimately back to my original assignment with Professor Sorkin, so it was simply an exercise in how often I would be willing to say, “Sure, whatever works.” I have no dignity, my friends. My biggest goal in life is to keep people happy and not rock the boat. (and to be independently wealthy. you knew I had to say it.) I am glad to have landed back in my original spot.

But the most exciting recent news truly has nothing to do with this semester. I received my teaching assignment for next year. Next fall, I’ll be handling a class of undergraduates at John Jay College. The head of the department there was my literature prof last semester, so I sent her an email to let her know I’d be there next fall. And she gave me the following reply: choose a microhistory class you’d like to teach…

Let me interrupt myself for a moment to tell you what I had been expecting. As the story goes for us PhD students, we get assigned to CUNY schools around the city and then the Americanists teach American history while the Europeanists teach ancient world (generally non-European) history. So, I was busy thinking, Mesopotamia, here I come. It took me at least two days to recover from the shock of having a choice and tentatively ask if I could teach on the French Revolution.

And the reply? If I come up with a catchy title, yes.

Please note how amazing this is. My first teaching assignment will actually be in my field. I was giving myself at least two years into a tenure track job before I got to teach French Rev. (And for my readers not living in an academia-saturated world, it can possibly take a year+ of post-doc work plus some adjunct positions before one dreams of landing a tenure track position.)

So this leaves me with one immense task for this semester (besides, you know, school). I have to come up with a clever title for my class. My Class. MY CLASS. Yikes.

I mean, how hard can it be, right? I basically need to write a Facebook status that will be put into a course catalog for a few weeks. And on my CV for life… Um… Suggestions gladly considered…