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[AugustWest]

Eh, they're OK sauteed with wine and shallots.

Damn!  Now I'll have to move this thread to The Kitchen.

[jough]

I don't know, August, threads about "eating" teenage girls could get you into trouble.

As you know.

[AugustWest]

Well Heavens to Murgatroyd!  I didn't mean it like that...

I was just making a cannibalism joke.  Pederasty was not meant to be implied in the least.

Just good ol' safe cannibalism.

Never mind.

[andalucia]

*cries*

[AlohaDawg]

Don't cry! Someone will kill you and eat you if you ask nice enough! Promise!

[wombat]

For the record, I'm going for my PhD in History specifically because I do want to teach.  

You're a saint.  Good luck.  Make sure you get a job in a small college where they care about teaching.

It's teenagers in large groups that are the problem, not individuals.  Tell the truth, andalucia, I'll bet you don't like most teenagers in large groups either.  The pack mentality takes over and any appreciation of things like history teaching and andalucia's fine qualities, it flies out the window.

[andalucia]

It's teenagers in large groups that are the problem, not individuals.  Tell the truth, andalucia, I'll bet you don't like most teenagers in large groups either.  The pack mentality takes over and any appreciation of things like history teaching and andalucia's fine qualities, it flies out the window.

Oh god yeah, wholeheartedly agree.  I was just taking my 15 minutes of fame as the Youthful One... I'm sure I hate teenagers more than most of you... Just that people give me funny looks when I complain about them as much as I want to.  I know I could never teach 'em.

[V-Adore]

See, yeah, if/when I go into teaching, it's going to be somewhere small. I couldn't stand to attend a gigantic state college; why would I conceivably want to teach at one?

[jay-ell]

See, yeah, if/when I go into teaching, it's going to be somewhere small. I couldn't stand to attend a gigantic state college; why would I conceivably want to teach at one?

I thought that, until I came to work at a large public university with a small humanities department.  NCSU is basically an engineering school, so the History department is small and sheltered enough to allow for very small classes (<20 at the 400 level and up, usually a mix of grads and undergrads).  I came from a private liberal arts Women's college, but the biggest culture shift for me was having boys in the class with me.  It was wierd.  

Definitely don't wanna teach a class of more than 40, though.  Gaaah.  I have nightmares about that.

[CortJstr]

I took a physics class that was so large that it filled 3 stadium-style rooms. Unless you were 20-minutes early you had to watch the teacher on closed-circuit TV. They even taped it so you could go to the media library and watch the class later if you missed it.

This was the same guy who kept a database of every paper he received and had a program that would compare your paper vs. all the old ones to see how likely it was you'd plagiarized.

[wombat]

I took a physics class that was so large that it filled 3 stadium-style rooms.....

This was the same guy who kept a database of every paper he received and had a program that would compare your paper vs. all the old ones to see how likely it was you'd plagiarized.

Now that I'm out of the business I can say this: If you're forced to take a class this large, you're justified in cheating.  So little effort is being put into teaching you, why should you make any more effort back?

I'm not saying you SHOULD cheat - the consequences of getting caught are too bad, and anyway, probably the only way you might learn something in such a class is by doing some work on your own.  But there's a reason the teacher of this class needed this database.  Although it's probably no fault of his own (the size of the class is probably someone else's idea), he is violating some kind of unspoken contract between teacher and student, so of course students will violate it on their side.

Hooray to all of you who want to teach small classes at small colleges, but remember that the problem is: the academic job market is so bad that you might not have your choice.

PS: Lots of good (and amusing) advice on academic careers here: http://chronicle.com/jobs/archive/advice/mentor.htm
and also see the first person essays elsewhere on that site.

[CortJstr]

The problem is that considering the efficiency of his system and that lying/cheating/stealing has only one punishment (being asked to leave) there weren't a lot of people willing to follow your advice.

[V-Adore]

So... now I have no idea what I want to do. At all. Whee. (This is after being lectured by my History of Science prof about how getting a job in science is so difficult and awful and if you don't have a reputation by 35 you're sunk anyway...)

[AlohaDawg]

True, but he didn't say what SORT of reputation. You can do a lot by 35.

[V-Adore]

True. I guess I have enough time to develop pet-suitable strains of bioluminscent hamsters and such. And probably to put a down payment on my Evil Mountaintop Lab.