8 months, 4 courses, 2 credits, and countless readings later, I have made it to the halfway point of my graduate degree. The year can be considered in other quantitative ways: I taught about a hundred students; was inspired by dozens of exciting ideas; made diverse friends; and shared many, many drinks with them. What follows are general takeaways on my year.
From Journalism to History
The thought of a 30-page final research paper was paralyzing coming from a discipline where our suggested readings consisted of 700-word news articles and the longest written assignments were 1,200-word in-depth reports. The scope of research and writing required was an important incentive to pursue a graduate degree, but it was also the source of some serious imposter syndrome. Looking back at this fear, I can say that I was irrational to think it would be difficult to produce 5,000 to 7,000 word papers when exploring intricate, nuanced, and colourful theories and histories.
It turns out that concise and compelling writing is a highly valuable and diverse skill even historians need. At the beginning of the year, I was worried that my lack of historical knowledge would put me at a disadvantage compared to my peers. Now I think my journalism experience gave me an advantage in synthesizing, writing, and performing information.
NOTE TO A PAST SELF: Girl, relax. What you learned in J-school will only help, not hinder, you.
Being a Teaching Assistant
Learning is a team effort. It works best when everyone is involved in a collaborative and creative project. This is an obvious statement. All professors, TAs, and students technically know this, but collaborative teaching or learning is not obviously or easily practiced.
Kelsea, another TA, and I were assigned to both the Fall and Winter sections of Historians Craft, a second year methodologies course. In it’s fall iteration, there was some effort to work and communicate between professor/TA/student, but it paled in comparison to the winter iteration. The professor ensured that we would always have ample in-depth meetings to discuss assignment ideas, structures and rubrics and logistics of class activities, group work and presentations. To be fair, Kelsea and I were only able to have informed collaboration from our first experience as TAs.
In this learning space we were able to create a few creative products to enhance learning. We organized two classes of student oral presentations, fitting 50 student and various opportunities for feedback smoothly into less than 3 hours of class time. We also produced a public deliverable showcasing student work: a virtual exhibit on Great War objects and monuments.
NOTE TO A FUTURE SELF: Students are a full of useful surprises. They are a wealth of information, ideas, interests, and of course, excuses for late assignments.
Jenn Leah Ko 