Grad School

This semester is already in full swing, and I think I have finally gotten my work/school schedule somewhat fixed.  I am taking two “real” classes, one research class, and three dummy hours so that I have the necessary hours needed for my assistantship.  I am taking Testing for TESOL/Foreign Language Classes and Multicultural Curriculum Development.  The testing class is online, and the curriculum class is a 10 week class that begins in October. In my research class, I am reworking (basically, redoing) a paper that I previously wrote.  The plan is to have a publishable paper by the end of the semester.  I am probably most excited about my research class since I have some really great ideas for the research that I want to do.  This paper looks at the reactive tokens used by Korean students who are learning English, and I still need to collect a large amount of data (looks like I will be cooking again for my Korean friends soon).  I am also working on a paper that looks at the communication strategies used my second language learners.  This is outside the scope of my classes, and I am having trouble staying motivated to get it completed.  I am just now in the planning stages of this project, but I hope to have it completed my December.  My Testing class will also be interesting, but it looks like it is going to require a lot more work than my previous online classes.  Also, USM has upgraded to the new Blackboard, and it is taking me a little bit of time to get used to maneuvering through the new software.

I have my usual 20 hours of mentoring hours with my students.  I have one new student, and all my students seem to be somewhat ready for the new semester.  I still have a lot to do to get organized for their tutor/mentor/study sessions, and I will probably spend the rest of today preparing for these sessions.  I recently found out that my students will miss 6 days of classes because of extracurricular activities that they are involved in.  Since they need every possible moment in class, this is not the best news, but it really means that they are going to have to work even harder this semester.

JJ has started her classes as well and has recently began working on her thesis.  I have no idea what she is working on, but do know that it has something to do with numbers. I am of little help to her besides encouraging her to stay organized and work hard early.  She is tutoring Math again this semester, but she is also teaching two sections of Math 99.  This will be her first look at how American students truly perform in Math classes, and I am looking forward to hearing her thoughts on their performance.  The classes she teaches are hybrid which means that she only sees her students for 50 minutes each week.  The students complete all of their homework via online modules and have access to video lectures to further explain how to work the problems.  I know that I would have trouble learning Math this way, and I am thankful that I am not required to take any Math classes.

Because of the amount of work that we both have to complete, this semester will probably be very quiet; I do not think that we are going to do any traveling.  We had plan to take a small vacation during winter break, but it looks like we are going to stay in Hattiesburg so that we can continue working on papers and portfolios.