Day One...

So, this was my first day as a tenure-track professor. Shakespeare at 9, Brit Lit I at 10. I've had that sort of schedule in grad school, and I'd forgotten how nice it was -- the whole day ahead of you. I do have office hours on Wednesday afternoon, but Mondays and Fridays are free. (In theory, this will be time to Pursue Scholarship. In practice, probably not so much.) I still don't have an actual office; that is, I have been assigned one, but it is a brand-new office and as yet it is full of workmen and sawdust.

The Shakespeare class seems nice: mostly English majors, a few people with acting or directing experience, pretty engaged. I'm still making my mind up about the survey. They are nearly all non-majors, and I'm starting to think that my Mentor may have been right; several of them seem like they'll struggle with the reading. Well, at least we hit Chaucer before the end of the drop period (and there are thirty people enrolled, so I really hope some of them do drop).

I can't stop thinking about the fact that my first Brit Lit survey, back in grad school, was an absolute disaster. The second one, at New SLAC, was great, but the student demographics were totally different and the class ended in 1600 instead of 1800. (Also, we had lots of shiny technology at New SLAC, so I could perk things up by showing images and film clips. Here, it is me and a piece of chalk and an overhead projector, maybe a portable TV on a cart if I remember to reserve one. Which isn't bad; most of my own favorite professors had themselves and a piece of chalk. I had myself and a piece of chalk for my first two or three years in the classroom. It's a little scary how quickly technology becomes a crutch, and maybe just as well that I'm going to have to do without.)

Tomorrow: Two sections of freshman comp. God, I hope they don't hate me as much as my first-semester freshmen did last year.