About ze hiatus...

Yes, I know I've been gone a long time. And I thank Romer!can (see the blogroll off to the side of this one!) for reminding me to post!

The short explanation is that I've -- *gulp* -- gone back to graduate school in a post-graduate master's of teaching program. The post-graduate part means that some of us already have an undergraduate degree, but still need teacher training to meet certification requirements in most U.S. states.

Consequently, yours truly is taking 19 credits this semester (oy...) of what amounts to vocational education: that is, gaining skills, field experience, and pedagogical understandings that graduate education in many other disciplines does not impart.

Political science is notorious for throwing you into the deep end of the swimming pool, that is, into a classroom as a teaching assistant and later as an adjunct or full-time instructor, without any real preparation of how to educate young minds. You learn it on the fly, and if anyone's organized anything at most major universities, it's a 1-2 day workshop on "Life As A T.A. / Instructor." Good luck with that. It's the reason why many, including me, struggled like the devil to do the best job we could in full-time academia, but had to reinvent the wheel the hard way, learning to teach by trial and error.

Talent and devotion to your material and kids only gets you so far. The massive time crunch and inevitable, mounting frustrations of not reaching students as well as you could corrode your ability and will to continue, assuming the hyper-competitive academic job market doesn't drop the guillotine on you early.

So it occurred to me that as long as the job search -- outside academia -- continues to be difficult for longer than I expected it would be, I had better retool myself, and quickly. And one area in which I knew I could use substantial improvement was teaching effectiveness on a strong pedagogical foundation.

My uncle put it this way a few years ago: the older you get and given half a chance, many people are seeking to shut doors in your face. It's your job to maximize opportunities, to open new doors and keep them open.

So that's what I'm doing. What it means is that I'm putting the time management advice I thankfully picked up off of Steve Pavlina to good use, to stay on track with my 19 credit hours and still handle two extra-curricular activities (aikido, and weekly rehearsal with a musical group, both to keep me sane and enriched in different learning environments). It does, however, mean time is at a premium and I have to devote most of my energies to focusing on what's coming next. I've had to put even my work for The Jefferson Institute on a secondary burner.

That's why writing in the blog has taken a lower priority. (They actually have us reflecting on blogs as a useful teaching tool, but I'm not going to inflict that on anyone through this particular blog. :-D ) My apologies. This is the path I have chosen to take, to re-focus and jump-start my career, and leave any hiccoughs behind.

And, ten paragraphs later, you might guess I'll find snatches of time and topics about which to write. :-D

P.S. Despite a really tough two weeks of school and evaluating whether this was the right path to take, I passed my second aikido test last night, to reach 5th kyu (Gokyu). Sometimes I'm amazed at how much I can juggle and still accomplish with measurable success.