Prophecy Girl

Let me follow up on PGOAT’s post from a couple of days ago. A few weeks ago my supervisor caught me in the hall between our offices and asked me if I wanted to teach over the summer, and if so, what. Summer teaching at my school is good money if you pack the students into your class, so “Yeah,” I told him, “I want to teach this summer.”

But teach what? One possibility was to teach a class in one of my AOCs. I’ve taught the class before, and I told my supervisor I wouldn’t mind the chance to renovate the syllabus I put together last time around. The other possibility was to teach Intro to Philosophy, which I’ve also done before, and can teach in my sleep. My supervisor listened to what I was saying and said, “Intro would take less work? That’s what you’re teaching.”

So even if I wanted to spend more time on teaching, consolidating a teaching competency in one of my AOCs, my supervisor wouldn’t let me do that. He wanted to keep my days free so I could work on my dissertation. As he sees things, my work, and not the Teaching Experience that PGOAT’s profs like to talk up, is what’s going to get me a job.

One last point that PGOAT’s too modest to make herself. Her department is ranked higher on the Leiter Report than mine is. By that metric at least, it’s a better department. But on the whole, people from my department get better jobs. Now there’s probably a few different reasons for that, but could it possibly be that all that awesome Teaching Experience isn’t everything it’s cracked up to be?

Back to my paper.