Our Little Geekling

Y’all. I am SO excited about school this semester. (I’m such a nerd, and I’m excited about it.)

I’m taking two classes, which is 2/3 time for graduate work (I guess? Three classes is full-time, so there’s no real way to be half-time, so I guess I’m part-time? I don’t know. I haven’t taken a math class since 2004).

I was recently accepted into, and began, the Graduate Teaching Academy (GTA) at OU. It’s a seminar program for graduate students, primarily teaching or graduate assistants, who want to teach. GTA is a requirement for earning a college teaching certificate, which you can earn as a PhD candidate. After GTA is over I will be a “fellow”, provided I complete all of the requirements, and that will be one bullet down for earning that certificate.

I have had two meetings of GTA so far and I’m really enjoying it! The first meeting was a panel of faculty and staff at the college, talking about diversity in class populations. The second meeting was a lecture by a professor of religious studies that talked about properly engaging students in thinking, because thinking and discussion and engagement in learning is severely lacking in the current classroom.

The program is made up of about 50/50 graduate and doctoral students, and about 80/20 TAs and non-teaching students. So I’m in good company with other Masters’ students, and not alone as far as not currently being a TA/GA.

And I finally decided (prior to applying for GTA) that I want to earn my PhD in Adult and Continuing Education after I’m done with this degree (which I’ll hopefully finish in about a year from now). So I’ll work toward my college teaching certificate and then finish up the work toward my PhD.

I am so excited to formulate my pedagogy and learn how to be a teacher! Someday, y’all. Someday I’ll have a career. And GTA is one step closer to that. It’s nice to finally know what I want to be when I grow up, at the oh-so-young age of 30.

WOOHOO!

Here’s a fun picture of Eriana and me from our day trip to Gainesville to meet up with our New Yorker friends. (It was awesome, by the way. Wonderful to see them, not sad at all to see Al, and everything was great.)

DIMPLES! Gosh, my kid is cute, huh? What? I’m not biased at all!