I Think I Sold My Soul . . .

Behold my schedule for this semester!! (Please click for larger version if print is too small to read.)

I don't quite know how this happened and I don't know how I'm going to survive this semester. I'm SO glad I dropped Infectious Disease Epidemiology. How do I manage to do this to myself every semester?! Every semester I tell myself not to push myself too hard, to take things easy so I have time for "fun," but this happens invariably! This is why I don't date or do anything right now, haha (partly true).

As one can see, I have 4 "true" courses: Biostatistics; Virology & Molecular Lab; Genetics, Health Behavior & Health Education; and Cancer Epidemiology. My 5th course is research, so I also have 10-13 hours of research that I have to do.

And I'm a GSI (again, GSI = grad student instructor). I have 3 discussion sections to "teach," each of them are 1 hour long. But I failed to realize (until today) that GSIs have 4 hours of office hours. I'm not looking forward to office hours, because I've been told that undergrads will mob GSIs for answers and explanations, hoping to get any leaked info on exams and quizzes. Not cool. I think I just sold my soul to GSI-ing . . .

I brought up something interesting at the meeting earlier today where all 6 of us GSIs and the two professors for the course met. I asked about how much "freedom" each individual GSI had in teaching his/her own discussion sections. Apparently this has never been asked before - the GSIs and the 2 professors traditionally met once a week, planned, and detailed what was to be done in every single discussion section to maintain "equality" across all discussion sections. This meant that everyone had the exact same problems to do, exact same activities, etc. It sounds pretty rigidly structured, but the professor(s) seemed hesitant to quash my "enthusiasm to teach."

So clearly I singled myself out and now I've reached a mild dilemma. Should I push to have more freedom for each individual GSI to teach how he/she sees fit (the other GSIs seemed kind of opposed to this) within a semi-structured outline of the discussion? Or should I conform to everyone to maintain equality between everyone else's sections and mine? Maybe I can, from within, influence what activities and materials will be handled in a significant number of discussions in my favor? I just don't know. Granted, we all get together once a week and collectively determine what points are most important to cover in discussion sections, what problems to go over, and what activities to do. Still . . . it's kind of like prescribing the same blood pressure medication to everyone, rather than tailoring which blood pressure medications to give to which patients.

The thing is I come from a vastly different background than pretty much all the other GSIs. I have more experience in "applied" genetics in relation to research, public health, and particularly epidemiology. I understand how genetics is used in the "real world" and how to get students interested in these applications. Most of the other GSIs are real biology grad students, so they work on such and such gene in species such as fruit flies, nematodes, mice, plants, etc. Basically, not people, and basically students will come to the point where they'll ask, "Why should I care about genetics?"

I don't want to become a "rogue GSI" and get my sections all excited over something I can't, or am not allowed to, deliver. I want my undergrads to care, I want them to see that genetics is useful, and is becoming ever-increasingly important in medicine, public health, and science in general. The course I'm GSI-ing for is the undergrad intro genetics course, so I know it's going to be focused on fruit fly, nematode, plant, mice, and bacteria genetics. Aka, boring (to most of the students, a large chunk of who are pre-med). I don't think they realize this as I don't think any of the other GSIs were pre-meds themselves.

Thoughts anyone?

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So I went to the gym today for the first time since before finals, like a month ago. I'm going to be sore and in pain tomorrow, haha. You may/may not have noticed my random 1-hour or 2-hour breaks in the "middle" of the day Mondays through Fridays. Those are for going to the gym (and resting/prepping as necessary).

Because of the ridiculous-ness of my schedule, I'm relegated to eating what I'd like to call the "wandering grad student diet." Basically, breakfast and lunch consists of fruits, a mix of nuts, and cereal bars while they still last. Dinner stays normal, though I think I'll be too tired to cook a ton.
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