I feel that I’ve started to disappear into the tunnel of graduate student life. People keep telling me that I’m very organised, and all I can say in reply is that I have to be organised, or I wouldn’t be able to get anything done.

I’ve started my Writing Center position—that is, I’ve started the work that surrounds the my position. This Sunday will be my first night in the Writing Center itself, and as such it’s my first opportunity to get hands on. I don’t know how exactly to prepare myself for this, simply because I don’t know what to expect from the students I’ll be working with. I’m sure there will be a lot of different levels of expertise.

At the same time, one of the subjects I’m taking is “Approaches to Teaching Writing.” I still feel a little mystified about what is expected of us as students in this subject, but nonetheless have already read essays on pedagogy that are going to be helpful to both the way I work through texts and which I’m sure will also be able to assist me in helping students with their work.

The book that has so far “grabbed” me the most is "The Elements (and Pleasures) of Difficulty", which not only makes the point that difficulty is itself a normal experience, but also makes the assertion that the point at which you experience difficulty is also a possible point of greater illumination: thinking out the implications of why something is itself difficult will allow the reader to see the layers that are in front of them, without the demand that everything be immediately clear.

I’ve also taken an introductory session to a series of Apprentice Teaching workshops which will give me both theoretical and practical experience that should be translatable to many different types of classroom. I need to register for other workshops now.

On Monday some emails I had written to introduce myself to students and staff in the Liberal Studies program with whom I will be working: by the end of the day, I had received at least a dozen replies to these emails—some were from staff outlining areas they believe students in continuing studies may need some extra help with, some from students keen to participate in support groups or to just ask some quick questions. I’ve also been to two MA thesis workshop classes during the week to introduce myself as someone students can come to with some of their concerns about the practical elements in writing a thesis.

One of my teachers said a fortnight ago that an expert is someone who feels confident working at the edge of their competence. It’s funny, because what I’ve already completed on my Melbourne thesis is actually longer than the thesis I will have to write at Georgetown next year—so I do already have a degree of experience such that I feel I can help other people. At the same time, I do sometimes watch myself planning this work and remember the time I used to find it difficult to speak in a class, for fear of being wrong. In my case, what I really needed was to accumulate a base of knowledge so that I could begin to see the connections between things, in addition to just developing confidence. I’m getting interested in how people learn, in how people listen. My Liberal Studies experiences will tie in nicely to the teaching workshops, and, hopefully, my classes in “Approaches to Teaching Writing.”

I’m really interested in some of these questions surrounding approaches to teaching and learning styles, as well as how other people approach organization for researching a longer work like a thesis. I’d love to hear from anyone who has any thoughts on this material.

The wonderful Annie, my housemate, had probably begun to think I would never emerge from my room, where I am usually either in or on bed, sleeping or reading, or at my desk, typing or playing Scrabble online with all and sundry. Thankfully, this isn’t the whole picture. Last weekend I went out to hiking with Annie and her friends at Great Falls in Virginia for a few hours, which was nice. We went out for Mexican food in the evening as well. On Sunday Annie and Adresh (her boyfriend, who is moving to India shortly) cooked up a feast, with fondue, mushroom tart, stuffed tomatoes and potato gratin, followed by baklava. Then they settled in with their friends Lindsay and Nikki for a Monopoly rematch—apparently the previous game had been very intense, which I can easily believe after witnessing some of the deal-making going on, while I wandered in and out of the room in between studying. And I’m determined to get to the National Gallery tomorrow, having failed to make it there several times already. I WILL see some of this town, other than the library, soon.