This term seems to offer inexhaustible opportunities for embarrassing watercooler interactions with colleagues… The latest has arisen from what I’m guessing must be some kind of unintended overlap between the lectures I’m delivering in one of my courses, and the essay topic assigned for another: apparently, some of my students have been quoting me in essays handed in to another course. The hallway interactions that have arisen from this, as these essays were being marked, and there I was, holding forth from the student texts… well, I suspect you can imagine…
While I can roll with a bit of ribbing on this (I’m being teased as though I knew this was happening – like I’m awarding extra points to my students for viral marketing my work in their other courses), what I’m really struggling with is that I’m generally profoundly uncomfortable with my lectures. Lectures are intrinsically simplifying, and I accept this simplification as a dimension of breaking complex material down so that it becomes easier for students to leap across the conceptual gaps required for them to be socialised into difficult material. But I always wince when I go back and read my own lectures, thinking that surely I could have done a better job than that, surely more nuance could have been preserved, etc…. And, while the material being quoted is probably not any more intrinsically wince-worthy than other lecture content I’ve produced, it happens to have generated certain… sound bites that I find simply excruciating. Of course, my reaction no doubt has something to do with having other faculty pass me in the hallway quoting said sound bites at me, usually followed by a quizzical “hmm?”…
Could the ground just kindly open up and swallow me now?
You are thinking too much again…
:P
At least you are getting it done, cringey soundbytes or not, well done!
-pat on back sent-
best
E
Yes, slowly this term done seem to be getting itself done. I’m still a bit stunned by this, I think. There is a huge amount I could have done better – and many things on a mundane level that I have done better in past terms – but I seem to have managed without major disasters. We’ll see if I can maintain that (rather low) standard for the few remaining weeks… ;-P
Learning from the experience about “things that perhaps could have been done better” is the main thing I feel. Early career academics (despite how much I hate the term) are very much still learning ‘the ropes’. In this case you seem to be a bit of your own worst critic. Hopefully the people around you at university teaching into other courses will understand that “things that perhaps could have been done better”, because 90% of the time they probably can always be done better. A whole range of factors influence the delivery of the course. A bevy of factors from the cohort of students, the number of times the staff have taught in the course, which combination of staff teach into the course, stress levels of everyone involved, outside influences from other life issues, what research you are doing at the time. I think more senior people at universities sometimes forget how badly they too have delivered a course which “things that perhaps could have been done better”.
I’m probably more “marginal career” than “early career” ;-P – I’ve been teaching in the social sciences since 1990, and have other relevant professional experience as well. I did have a hiatus from teaching for several years when I first moved to Australia, and the institutional and educational climate here is a bit different from where I did my earlier work. But, in many senses, I have fewer excuses than most other people, if I stuff up a course design…
My immediate supervisors have been incredibly supportive – there are some teething issues associated with my somewhat peripatetic disiplinary background, and of course it would help to have a bit more advance warning about what I will be doing each term. But, relatively speaking, there are plenty of other folks who probably deserve your sympathy before I do – which doesn’t mean it’s not appreciated. :-)
I laughed when I read “marginal”. Perhaps as I also feel a little “marginal”… :-P But then reading your explanation, I see your point about your experience not really fitting the ECA criteria… I sometimes think until you have tenure you pretty much suffer from ECA… almost like a syndrome… :-P