UMKC offers only interdisciplinary Ph.Ds. I'll be moving to Kansas in October, so there's also KU. Although it would be an hour drive, so...
The thing that worries me the most is the lack of health insurance, frankly, given my 2 surgeries in the last 2 years. I take 3 scripts monthly, so it's a consideration. Mostly, though, I want to (a) teach stimulating topics, (b) not have to constantly deal with crisis or behavioral classroom issues and (c) have a more fluid schedule.
And not have to obsess about curriculum. Pedagogy, I'm fine with, but spending more time writing a lesson than teaching it is getting frustrating.
I'm speaking of the endless justification of a lesson, nut actually thinking about how to research, scaffold and present a lesson. My curriculum classes have made me a better teacher -- I do resent all of the minute, CYA, NCLB bs that is present in public secondary ed.
I can see that. Would private school be an option at all?
Sure, i'm not discounting teaching in high school for the next couple of years totally. I'm just thinking about what is frustrating me, and what I like and dislike about teaching. I'm really tired of not teaching, and focusing on the more social work and behavior issues part.
I'm becoming a Danny Glover/Mary Blige mash-up: I'm too old for this shit; too much drama.
Good thinking. Sorting out the pros and the cons and what exactly about your current job is problematic is sensible in the extreme. it kinda bums me out because you were so enthusiastic about teaching not very long ago, but I have a lot of sympathy for you. All the non-teaching CYA stuff is what got me out of teaching ages ago.
I'm still enthusiastic about teaching, -t; I'm just not TEACHING. My current job is education advocate at a homeless shelter for teens, and it's so not teaching. It's a useful job, but it's not teaching; it's social work, and it's not right for me. I'm burnt out on it already.
I've been called a bitch and a cunt about (seriously) 500 times in the last 10 months. Nope; not my personality. I need a slower pace, more introspection, less crises.
Oh, I didn't know that's what you were doing! Yeah, that sounds seriously hard and not right for you. hope you can figure something out that will fit you better and give you health insurance and pay you well enough, etc.
Kennedy half-dollars are possibly cooler, if not as valuable, if you can find a source, which I have no guidance on.
Erin, that sounds awful for you. It's good to know what you need, though, and sometimes the only way to do that is "not this".
t /silver lining
Plus, I dunno what my dissertation would be. Atwood? The explosion of female heroines in modern fantasy? Buffy? Urban fantasy as a response to a mechanized global culture? Umm.
So interesting (to me) that you're bringing it up now.
Next year, if my mostly awesome sociology schedule won't fail, I'm about to be very lucky with my "elective" classes. One of them, touchwood touchwood touchwood, will be with Nachman Ben Yehuda.
I got this whole theory how there really is no "Other", and how it's just a part in us we prefer to project on other social groups. And I started thinking what's the place of Sci-Fi in it, when I realized how similar are some ethnographies to SF/F novels - and the absurdity that we can't imagine another social order without it involves aliens.
Now, and it's all in very early stages - I want to see how "The Other" is being portrayed in SF/F, and what does it mean in terms of the sociology of deviance.
Plus, I dunno what my dissertation would be. Atwood? The explosion of female heroines in modern fantasy? Buffy? Urban fantasy as a response to a mechanized global culture? Umm.
FWIW, I would read any of these.
Shir, it's only tangentially related but have you heard of the Monkeysphere?
