Wow... so much time has passed since my last post, there's no possible way for me to catch up and revisit all those days. I need to be better at jumping on here every night... any suggestions?
Anyways, today is Thursday, and I've - for the most part - survived the first two weeks of doc school. I feel like I've already learned a ton, and read even more, but I'm enjoying it so far. I was just wholly unprepared for the amount of work I'd have to do. SO. MUCH. READING! Most of the material has been pretty interesting so far; if you haven't read Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions of Walter Ong's Orality and Literacy, both are great books. : ) If you are into the whole reading-to-expand-your-horizons thing, those are great books to check out.
That said... I can honestly say I've never read a whole book (for class, that is) in one week before, and now I've done it twice. : ) In addition, I had to grapple with some paradigmatic issues in regards to my own research preferences, which is something I feel like I do every time I take a methods class. I used to consider myself super anti-post-positivist (meaning I don't like the whole sweeping generalization/applicable to everyone mentality), but I'm reconciling it as more and more of an acceptable paradigm the more we read. : ) I hadn't expected that, especially not in my qualitative research methods class.
All this said, it's been tough to maintain the same kind of social life I had going on during orientation. I was talking with a bunch of my cohort yesterday, and we all commented on how we haven't seen much of each other anymore compared to before classes started. :\ I think we might try to make a little more effort in that regard, but I guess we'll see... we do have to read a ton for methods on Monday, so it's going to be another busy weekend.
Teaching has been great, though - I have an awesome group of students in my Public Speaking class, and they all seem pretty engaged and with it. It's been fun to try new approaches to teaching the concepts, and to see how well they respond to things. Overall, I think this class is going to be a good one. : ) I'm excited to see where it goes.
Alright. I have much to do and little time to do it, so it's off to other things.
