Guess I’m going to start writing these in the mornings, or perhaps more intermittantly overall. This grad school stuff keeps me busy!
Yesterday was my first day in LIN 1, the class I TA for. The way my classes are arranged now, I have all my “real” classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and all my TA classes on MWF. The class went really well! It was just about what I expected – bleary eyed freshman all hping they don’t have to buy the reader and don’t have to come to my discussion sections, which are primarily on Fridays. The good news is, the discussion sections aren’t required, so they won’t show up anyway. Talked with my Co-TA Dionne after class and got some good pointers from her. She’s thinking about maybe getting our in-session exercises done this week so we can hand them to the disabilities center to get translated to Braille for our blind student. Not only is this probably a reasonable idea, it’s also makes my anxiety level really decrease about planning my lessons. If we do them together, especially with such an experienced TA (she’s taught this course, and TAed for it 6 times already!) I really don’t think I can get in too much trouble.
Spent a little while reading on campus after that, and I must say that so far the main library is very satisfactory! Read quite a bit of Saussure in there while waiting for Lewis to get out of his Latin class. I was on so much of a roll with my reading we actually put off meeting until a while later, and I got quite a lot done. I finished up that Saussure last night, and I feel really triumphant about it! It was a thick, heavy, reading and I feel like maybe for the first time I really understood and was totally behind what the author was saying. I think the wiki note taking really does help. Saussure also is a pretty hilarious graph maker, and I think later I’ll put up some of my favorite Saussurian hilari-graphs.
Also had the Linguistics Grad Student Association (do we have an official title like that? I’d like to think so) mixer. Had pizza at Steves, which was bueno! They were sort of finishing up when we finally got there, since my reading took so long, and we wanted to drop by the bookstore and copy shop before hand to get the materials for our new class. Sadly the readers were 45 bucks each, and the books 40 a piece, so we knocked back a few hundred bucks in books yesterday I was hoping we were done with already. Oh well. Anyway, the pizza party was friendly, and it was nice to get to gossip a little bit about what’s going on with our classes and the department and all that. And to verify with our compadres that we’re all a little lost and overwhelmed at the moment. Good times!
Came home, watched the debate, and finished that reading… a very productive night. Debate wasn’t great, but it was interesting. Guess that’s maybe what one should hope for on those things. Today — to Berkeley! Going to see Nina, Armand, and get my hair cut. Should be great!