I imagine it is easy to make study here a full time job: unlike the courses I’ve taken in Australia, which only have one or two essays due a semester, the courses I am taking here will have work due every week. Both the New 18th Century and Dickens will require a weekly response paper of around 1000 words—in addition to a major paper at the end of semester. Approaches to Teaching Writing will have other work due—planning a syllabus in weekly stages for teaching a writing course. There’s something exhilarating about the idea of all this work—but it will also be a test. I assume from what I’ve heard that many undergraduate subjects function in a similar manner: there is a constant workload. This means, I suppose, it is difficult to put things off until the last minute—you can put off the weekly paper until the night before (or, I suppose, the morning of the class), but nevertheless you have to keep working throughout the semester. As an undergraduate I often tried to make this work, but it was only when I got to Honours that I had any kind of working method that would allow me to do this. When I began my research work on Henry James in Melbourne I consolidated a work pattern of daily reading and daily writing—if I hadn’t done so, I don’t know if I would be ready for this undertaking.

I am also beginning to find out more about my role as a Writing Center Associate (reluctantly I’ve begun to spell it the American way—it is, after all, their “center”) attached to Liberal Studies. It is in fact a new role, so it has a lot of responsibility attached to it. I will be facilitating a thesis support group for students undertaking a MA in Liberal Studies. These students are non-traditional—that is, they are by and large adults who work, who may be returning to study, or may be taking on a different field. I’ve been advised many of them may be professional writers, but unfamiliar with the writing requirements of academic work. In the coming weeks I’ll be meeting the teachers who run their initial Thesis Proposal Workshops, as well as Thesis Mentors to find out what areas the feel students may need assistance with, as well as meeting with the students themselves to find out what their main concerns are. I suspect that all I can do is play it by ear, keep careful notes of everything and find out what seems to work by doing it. I’m looking forward to it—I think it will be immensely rewarding, and I always think it is very brave to return to study as an adult—probably even more so here in the US, where college seems to be such a youth-oriented experience. I imagine I will act in some ways as a liaison between staff and students, that I will become a sounding board, and that I will also try to create a group whereby students can discuss work with each other, instead of feeling that the process of writing a thesis leaves them cut off from the rest of the world. Or at least, that's what I hope will happen.

Which is all to say, there is no lack of things going on that will keep me busy.