|
No More Teachers... Look: Howard Dean's weblog loves me! I handed in my Blake paper last night. Bye-bye, Blake paper. Bye-bye. I can once again read whatever I want until September. Dr. V emailed and told me one of his advisees just got accepted to my program and wanted to give her my email address. No problem, naturally - and I'll try to be very positive. Well, I'll be honest and positive. This is the most unorganized program I've ever been a part of. No one tells you anything. You have to learn the ins and outs by osmosis, apparently. Advisors don't seem terribly interested in advising; there doesn't really seem to be much advising to be had. My advisor is my current Romanticism professor; he didn't seem to know he was my advisor and, honestly, didn't seem to care after I told him. Perhaps I built up my excitement level too high, but when I write a personal statement that's 99% about Romanticism and then I'm assigned the Romanticist as my advisor and he seems pretty uninterested in both of those facts, how is that supposed to be encouraging? This is a small department. Fewer than 50 graduate English students, I believe. So why can't they manage to produce clear instructions? There is no handbook that outlines registration procedures, how you get a parking tag, where you park, what the requirements are, etc. There's a general graduate level handbook, and that's it. Should I really have to notice that fall course descriptions are on the website (with no directions), wait and wait and wait, and finally call up (today) and say hey, when is registration? (Apparently it's whenever.) Why do I need to push for direction? If I wanted an independent study, I'd stay home and read my Wordsworth biographies and call up Dr. C on the phone or email Dr. V because frankly, my undergraduate experience kicked the ass of my first graduate level course. Of course I can't base my entire graduate career on the fact that I was bored out of my mind during this course, not to mention frustrated beyond belief with the syllabus sequence. However, I am far less excited about grad school now than I was in December when I was accepted. Hopefully the 18th century British novel course I'm taking in the fall is more interesting and engaging than this one was and I can just brush this aside. It's just so disappointing because, well, it was the Romantics! My Romantics. I didn't feel like this once all semester. Not for a minute. I didn't feel like this either. I took an entire Romanticism course and I didn't even think about updating Spots of Time. In fact, I couldn't have been less interested in updating it. I don't know. I'm going to wait and see. None of the students in my class seem in love with the program. Maybe it's the program. Maybe it's them. Maybe it's me. Maybe this class was a fluke. In any event, I'll wait and see til the fall.
|
