Teaching looks a lot like manual labor.

You may remember that this is going to be my First Semester Teaching. I have been anxious about what that might entail for me responsibility-wise, am I lecturing? Grading? Writing assignments? Prepping? What?

After a few long-winded meetings with Dr. Teacher, I think that - despite the hourly breakdown of my responsibilities he gave me (3 hours grading and 1 hour clean up a week? Really?), most of my job will be to keep Dr. Teacher sane. That is why I am spending this weekend unpacking.

The space for the teaching labs has been 'renovated' so every piece of equipment, every chemical, every one of the hundreds of little fragile glass flasks has to be moved back into the the dungeon, unloaded and organized into a semi-logical fashion.
Before classes start the 25th.

If I were Dr. Teacher, I know I would be more than just freaked out (which he is), I would be livid (which he is). The space isn't technically ready for us even now, and there isn't like some major task force on hand to help with the transition.

And they didn't clean up the dust, and they didn't actually put any shelves in the prep area.

And they killed our internet connections.

But rather than freaking out about this myself (not my job), I am trying to maintain a optimistically hardworking attitude, and just fix the problems that will be my problem later. Like organizing glassware. Now is probably a good time for Dr. Teacher to form an impression that I am normally a hard working person, so that when things come up later- like I want to some experiments- he'll be inclined to be flexible. And things will come up.

I think I should point out the Universities attitude about the value of Teaching- I am getting a pay cut this semester. You can bet I'll be counting up my 20 hours a week pretty closely, because teaching won't get me any closer to graduating. Oh, I see- this is where all of those cynical, apathetic TAs came from.