On the other hand, one of the terrific things about New Job is that there is no coddling of students with a reading period or an exam period. So when you are done, you are really fatherf*ck!ng done. Last class is the exam: graduation four days later.

Dr. Crazy is so right — having the time to feel like you are teaching well, and have the energy imagine new and fun ways to teach the material is the ticket.

However, what I object to is the expectation of an increasing service load in our university- we have fewer full-time professors and more service opportunities. I just don’t have the time to do it all. Other professors don’t do the service and don’t get penalized for it (especially if they are already tenured, which most of are full-time professors are because of the ongoing hiring freeze). Some are technically on committees and never show up. Until we have a system that lays out a real set of expectations for service, it will be an unfair burden. We should get a little bit of course credit for service- not to reduce our teaching load, but so that it is tracked and the University administration SEES (in numbers- the only thing they seem to notice) how much work goes into that service for which they get free labor.

You know, koshembos, faculty in the humanities are supposed to do research too. And they do, of course, they simply do it while also teaching those larger course loads.

I show clips from Pocahontas in my intro class. I think it might be the one thing many of them remember from the class, years from now.

My load is two courses per semester and if I make the dean much richer, i.e. bring sums of 6 to 7 digits $, I’ll teach even less. Since I am suppose to do research, two per is a lot. I love to teach cooperating students and hate to teach cows watching me with glazed eyes.

I fully agree that we don’t spent enough resources, intellect and bureaucracy on improving teaching. Furthermore, the current teach state of art is 1950 at best.

Here is an amusing recent personal anecdote: A family member asked me if I was teaching on a specific afternoon. I replied no and I was mentally accounting for the two committee meetings, student interviews, and department activity I had scheduled that afternoon, the person happily excalimed, “Oh good! Since you aren’t busy that afternoon, can you take me to a medical appointment?” Yeahhhhh…because when we aren’t teaching a class we are typically napping because there is nothing to do!

You’re so right: Gaston stands in for those posturing politicians, ready to make their mark by attacking all those scary things they don’t really understand and wouldn’t want to, anyway!