New Year, New Opportunities
(Grad Student Life, Part Two)
I love the start of the school year. New classes, new colleagues, new school supplies! First day of class pictures were not a ‘thing’ when I was in school, but I got this picture during New Graduate Student Orientation so I thought it use it as my back-to-school picture, even though I don’t have a memo board with all my details on it. Even when I was working off-campus and wasn’t in the thick of the fall kick-off, August still felt like the start of a New Year. So, I’m definitely enjoying being back on a campus at the start of a semester.
In my university administrator days one of the ideas/opportunities I shared with new colleagues was, “You get to say you’re new for a full year. After all, until you’ve experienced a full cycle there’s always an event, spot on the calendar, or experience you haven’t seen yet.” Conversely, you’re only new until the next new person is hired. At that point, you know something more than they do and are in a position to help them even if it’s just finding the restroom. In other words, newness is, at least in part, a state of mind.
My first class was supposed to be last Thursday, but it was canceled so as I write this on Monday, I haven’t yet been to class. When I carefully packed my backpack for today’s class, I forgot to include my computer. Luckily I realized it before I was on campus. In my defense, while I did take a computer to class when I was teaching, I have never needed one as a student before now. It would have been nice if my teaching brain had kicked in a bit earlier.
So, I haven’t been to class yet, but I have been to two orientations – one for all graduate students and one for graduate students in the History department. When I was a brand new administrator, people thought I was actually a brand new student. At the department orientation last week, a new faculty member thought I was one of his faculty colleagues. Somehow that felt like a circle of life kind of experience.
At the campus-wide orientation, I went to the session on library resources to learn what technology I need to know about that has come into existence since I last did research. I also stopped at the Disability Services table to learn about elevators. Years ago at UT Austin an experienced colleague showed me the way to travel three or four blocks from our parking lot to our building by going through buildings. It took a bit longer, but on rainy or cold, nasty days, it was a definite improvement. I knew that on a campus with this many hills and stairs, there had to be a way to go through buildings by entering on one level, using an elevator and exiting on a different level.
The staff member at the table didn’t immediately know what I meant, but then he realized that I could in fact get from the Quad where I’ll be going to classes to the student center by entering the library on the first floor and exiting on the second. It doesn’t eliminate all of the stairs, but enough. And yes, there are lots of ramps, but some of them are long and challenging in their own way. I’m finding people who aren’t new to help me find my way around.
I do have the syllabi for my classes and they are a bit intimidating. At the departmental orientation one of the faculty warned us we would do a lot of reading and writing in the coming months and she wasn’t kidding. But I’m the nerd who looks at the titles and can’t wait to read them. Some of the activities and assignments, however, feel a bit intimidating. It’s some of the public part of Public History. We’ll be going to museums, historical sites, and out into the community to do analysis and make recommendations. Lots to learn and as a friend said, “by the end of the semester, you’ll know how to do it.” I certainly hope he’s right.
This week’s challenge is to remember that no matter how new you are at something, there are people around who can help you learn. There are also people who are newer than you are and you can help them. Don’t waste the opportunities that come with being new, and if you aren’t new, don’t waste the chance to see the world through the experiences of people who are new. Even if you’ve been some place for a long time, I bet there’s still something new for you to learn or find or explore. Challenge yourself to be new even when you aren’t.
Take care,
Gage
Quote of the Week
“And now we welcome the new year. Full of things that have never been.”
Rainer Marie Rilke
“René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke (4 December 1875 – 29 December 1926), known as Rainer Maria Rilke, was an Austrian poet. Acclaimed as an idiosyncratic and expressive poet, he is widely recognized as a significant writer in the German language. His work is viewed by critics and scholars as possessing undertones of mysticism, exploring themes of subjective experience and disbelief. His writings include one novel, several collections of poetry, several volumes of correspondence and a few early novellas.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainer_Maria_Rilke(opens in new tab)