I only have two final exams this semester, because a) I'm in a clinic, which only gets a credit/no credit designation; b) see a), but for a journal; c) one of my classes was finished halfway through the semester, so I took the exam just after spring break.
As such, I am now doing everything BUT studying for my two exams. [I don't really feel anxious about these two exams - yet - in part because it's kind of arbitrary, I think, whether I'll get an Honors or a Pass grade in both of them. I *could* work hard to get an H in either/both, but I'm just not sure I care that much.]
Some things I've done instead:
* Graded papers for the undergrad class that I'm TAing. This is torture. Some of these kids CAN NOT write. They're juniors & seniors at Yale, and yet they have trouble forming complete sentences or creating logical arguments. Sometimes I wish that I read the papers while slightly buzzed, but that would be irresponsible TAing, I imagine, and I'm not getting paid the big bucks to be an irresponsible TA. If you want to talk about being irresponsible, look no further than one of my students, who after getting a week-and-a-half extension on the only graded assignment of the semester, insisted at 11pm that she needed a "few more hours" to polish her paper that I had told her was do-or-die due at 12 midnight because I needed to read it & grade it before going to bed/getting up uber-early to get on a train [see below]. At 1:08am, my plea of "Please, for the love of my sleep schedule, send me what you have now!") was met with "Just 15 more minutes, promise!" Those 15 more minutes turned int0 30, which resulted in a not-too-happy SB. The paper was, to put it lightly, underwhelming. I found out today that she's taking the class pass-fail. "Underwhelming" = she passed (and with a pretty good grade!), because I'm a really really nice TA. [To be fair, a couple of the papers have actually been quite good. Hooray!]
* Went to NYC. Twice. In 30 hours. I have to get a special tourist visa to travel to South America later this month because the Consulate General of a certain soccer-crazed country demands outrageous fees and rather excessive procedure, in retaliation for the US doing the same to their citizens. Fair enough, I suppose, but I don't make US immigration policy! In any case, I had to either make two trips to NYC to drop off and pick up my visa, or pay a bundle to a private company to do it for me. It turns out to be cheaper to take the Metro North and do it myself. Ironically, the first studying I've done this finals period happened when I opened a Property hornbook on the train and again in the Consulate waiting room.
* Packed my room and moved my stuff into storage and a different apartment. Our subletters needed our apartment on a certain date, which just so happened to be a date before we really wanted to vacate. So I'm now subletting someone else's apartment for the week, because I figured I'd be more productive here in New Haven than somewhere more exotic. Productivity has not been particularly high, however. On the upside, there are nice neighbors & it kind of feels like being in a hotel for a week.
* Organized a few summer events with YLS alumni for a student group I'm involved in. Wished that I'd actually be in densely-populated cities this summer, so that I could go to the events.
***
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5 comments:
Hey! Love your blog. Any tips on the best storage places in New Haven? I'm a 0L and want to drop my stuff off somewhere local for the summer to make move-in easier come August.
Oh, SB, why do you have to make non-Yalies so jealous?
KP--I am a OL too, and I'm storing my stuff at Public STorage in West Haven this summer for a couple of months, if that helps.
SB--Can you tell us more about getting TAships for classes outside of the LS?
Sorry, KP, I don't have any tips for storage locations. My guess would be that somewhere along Boston Post Road in West Haven or Orange would be close/cheap...but I don't know off-hand of anyone who's done summer storage anywhere other than an apartment.
Fran, here's some info on the teaching fellow program:
Contact:
Howard El-Yasin
howard.el-yasin@yale.edu
Assistant Director
(203) 432-2757
HGS 139
He said he's a central manager of the program...but he acts more as a clearinghouse than a decider; departments contact him if they need someone and don't have any names on file. He suggested to be proactive, one should contact the 'Registrar' within each academic department to make it known that you're interested/available. You can generally find the name of the Registrar on each department's web site. All the departments I contacted were very responsive (telling me either positively or negatively that they would/wouldn't need people in the spring, and that they'd keep my name on file either way). I got my gig by contacting departments that I have an academic background in.
Here's some more info: http://www.yale.edu/graduateschool/academics/program.html
I think from that link, if you look around, you can also find info about the pay classes here (http://www.yale.edu/bulletin/html/grad/financing.html#Teach_Fellowships).
Course listings are available here: http://students.yale.edu/oci/search.jsp
A handful of my 1L friends began TAing this semester, and everyone seems to really like it. I have really enjoyed my position (other than the late-night stress in this post!), and the pay's pretty good given the amount of actual work that I do. I think the most common departments are political science and history, but that might be due more to student background than where the need is...you can also TA for intro science and math classes, or creative writing, or whatever (it just generally has to be a larger, non-seminar class).
Also, Anonymous, I'll admit that we do have a pretty great deal here...but then, in this economy, lots of law students are better off cramming for tests and writing papers than they would be otherwise.
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