Graduate School: 1 Week Down, Many To Go

[fadethecat]

So, graduate school! I've now had one week of real proper classes, though I still haven't been to two of the seven, on account of labor day. Monday's my roughest day, with three classes: the archeology lecture, Latin sight-reading, then Hesiod. Eek. At least only two of those assign homework/paper/readings, eh? Anyway, so far

Comments

[undauntra]

Ooh, artifacts! Can I interest you in Hellenistic Egyptian jewelry, purely on the grounds that it is REALLY PRETTY and if you have to spend hours looking at something for a paper, it might as well be pretty?

[fadethecat]

Alas, I did not think to specify that the class I'm taking is specifically on prehistorical Europe. So neither the time nor the place would work for my paper. Still, if you have a link to some nice pictures of such things, I'd be happy to look for my own aesthetic purposes!

[ricardienne]

Your version of How To Grad Student sounds a lot more useful than ours, which was more "Whatever the professor whose turn it was that day thinks is useful." So we had some good lessons on things like "How To Actually Find Stuff in Pauly-Wissova" and "How To Read the Apparatus Criticus (and why you should be ashamed if you read texts without them)", but we also had some not great ones, and we definitely got zero information about the practicalities of How To Academia. So I think you picked a good program, pedagogy-wise!

[fadethecat]

Yeah, I'm really happy with how this program is acting so far in terms of clarity about all the Unwritten Rules. (Some of which were helpfully written down, and a lot of which are being conveyed verbally.) It's hope-inspiring!

[ralphmelton]

My grad school 23 years ago did not have a How to Grad Student class, and I might have been really helped by one.

[fadethecat]

I gather it's something of a recent thing, though CNES seems to have done it for at least enough years to have had multiple profs take it on before. I think it's the kind of thing most graduate programs ought to implement. It's just so useful to have these things made explicit!

[sophielandon]

UT's art history program has one of these all wrapped up in a bunch of department-specific stuff; I always called it a cross between charm school and boot camp. All taught by one professor (same one every year) and called "Art Historical Methods". A library tour, a tour of all the object collections on campus, slide library indoctrination, several sessions devoted to various methodological controversies, with short presentations critiqued by fellow classmates, and a final paper based on an object not in your particular period, with a half-hour presentation to go along with. By the end of it, you should be able to produce an abstract and eventual paper for a professional conference

[fadethecat]

Oh, interesting! This one doesn't have any sort of projects; it's a Pass/Fail one-credit class strictly for the purpose of being able to schedule it and require it in the system. There's also the difference that all of the grad students are TAs their very first year; there were some mandatory seminars during orientation about that, too. Except for me, on account of the fellowship I have.

[sophielandon]

Interesting. I never knew whether all of UT makes/made you wait until you get your MA to TA, or just my department, but obviously that doesn't work quite right on a combined program. (Then you AI after you've passed your orals.) In the meantime, students who need a little cash or want to get paid to audit a class can grade.

[fadethecat]

The TA's here seem to do a lot of grading, so maybe there's a different in terminology between the universities? In any case, they do seem to fling all the entering grad students right into it in this department.

[inflection]

Wow, that class on grad studenting does sound useful. We got nothing of the sort. Into the TA pit you go! I mean, I guess it worked out, but it does seem like it would have been handy.

Of what do the secret collections consist? Blasphemous texts in honor of unspeakable gods? Mad ravings concerning the ancient roots of the world-spanning conspiracy?

[fadethecat]

I'd be flailing a lot more right now if the department hadn't demonstrated, on several points, that they are perfectly willing to explain to me the things about grad school that I need to know but don't yet. Thank god for modern pedagogy, eh?

I'm not sure what's in the secret collections! That's how I know they're secret. Guess I'll find out late this week, or next week.