New Here

[Myitt]

I basically want to be your high school biology teacher, sci-fi club included

If you're interested in secondary school ed we have a couple of teachers here at RAF, including the fabulous Jess (Kit Cloudkicker) and my girlfriend Jessi (Terenia/Teach).  Even if you're sure it's not for you, feel free to bounce questions off of them.  If you really like teaching and want to do it at the college level, just keep in mind you'll also be expected to do research and grant-writing as well as advise students.  You probably already knew all of that, but if teaching is your thing, many universities involve lots more than just teaching.  Granted, there are plenty of colleges and universities that value good teaching skills, and honestly it's an asset to be a good instructor as well as a good researcher.  I'd say it's even more important, except the people who fund tenure are going to be unfortunately looking at harder bottom lines than "is this professor actually good at instructing the next generation?" >.<

I'm trying to finish up my M.S. in museum and field studies, with an emphasis on vertebrate paleoecology.  Feel free to ask me anything about...well, anything, heh, but the grad school process can be ridonkulous and I'd be happy to help if I can. 

Hm...as far as nerdy animal/plant bio goes...oh jeez.  Well I study the fossilized droppings of big, dead saurian carnivores, I have a bizarre memory for mammalian families (my last name sounds very similar to the Latin name for the rabbit family...), I think Euglena are adorable and I love nudibranchs.  Not just because they look kinda like Yeerks, I swear. 

[Ouroboros]

Well thanks for the tips!

I'm aware of what it all entails, and hopefully I won't change my mind about it (and can actually manage to pull it off ). I actually enjoy a lot of the research and whatnot, and I've been doing a lot of talking with my professors and the advisers at my school to make sure it's how I want to go about everything. I'm really interested in teaching and all that, but I'm about 98% sure I couldn't handle it at a high school level. I did alright with the education minor, I always got good grades on lesson delivery and stuff like that. It's all just at the point where I have to figure out where I want to go and actually get it set in motion. Everything sounds so much better in my head, haha. There's always just that tiny bit of doubt about my future lingering around, but I'm taking the steps I need to take and hopefully I'll make it work.

As far as paleontology and stuff, I'm sure I would have tons of questions, but I honestly don't know where to start or what to ask. It's always been kinda cool to me, and like most kids I loved dinosaurs, but I simply don't know enough about any of it to figure out where to start. If I think of anything to ask (it's inevitable) I'll make sure to let you know.

[Terenia]

Teaching high school isn't all that bad. This is my fifth year teaching AP Language and Comp to 11th graders and I love the teaching part. Not a fan of the administrative crap, but every job has its own red tape and bs. My kids, though, are awesome and I get to blather on at great lengths about how the best way to get a girl is to learn how to utilize parallelism in your daily conversation.

And plug Animorphs, of course. XD

[Ouroboros]

I got into a classroom a few times and i just realized that the high school level just wasn't for me. I'm glad you found that it works for you, though...We really don't have enough good teachers.

I wrote a paper on parallelism for a rhetorical grammar course one time. I hated placing repetitive gerunds, writing artificial sentences, and making passable examples...haha.

Never helped me get a girl, as far as I can recall. I had to rely on my hair (girls love playing with long hair for some reason, I guess) and my collection of sappy poetry for that...

Though one girl went out with me because she saw my battered and beloved copy of Ginsberg's Howl and Other Poems sticking out of my back pocket in class. I guess it was finally good for something, after spending nearly 7 years in my pocket/backpack/car.

[Myitt]

Parallelism helped me get a girl.

Uh.

Well, kinda. 

[Terenia]

Yeah, I only like you for your parallelism, you know.


High school teaching definitely isn't for everyone. Then again, neither is middle school (omg terrifying) or elementary school (ewww, little kids. Snotty. Blargh) or....well most things, lol.

Honestly I've been casually looking for another job. I enjoy teaching quite a bit, but I also get bored if I stay in the same place for a long time. I hope you're able to find something to do with an English degree that suits you. I'm more of a rhetoric girl than a literature girl, personally. I enjoy some of the classics (especially British literature), but I really geek out over linguistic and grammatical structure more than anything. XD

[Ouroboros]

I haven't met a lot of people who are into rhetoric and grammar. It's pretty interesting stuff and I really enjoy it.

Which British literature/classics do you like? That's a huge part of what I love and study.

[Terenia]

Brave New World is one of my all-time favorites, but what turned me on to British Literature was The Once and Future King and several Milton excerpts (I have yet to read the entirety of Paradise Lost, and I doubt I will ever have the time to, but what I have read I enjoy). I also absolutely love Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Or at least I did when I read it in 11th grade. In high school I enjoyed the old Arthurian legends, and also read a few excepts of Le Morte d'Arthur. Since then my interests have shifted towards more utopian/dystopian focuses.

Unfortunately, I can't say I've read (or remember) nearly as much as I would like. I graduated with my BA in 2007, and since then I haven't had enough free time to indulge in any reading beyond student essays. My literature background is incredibly rusty and I'm having far too much fun reading Martin and King right now to go back to the classics.

One of my last college courses in undergrad was a linguistics course and it totally sold me on rhetoric and dialectical shifts. I just think it's fascinating to see how language changes across time and regions. Especially when you look at idiomatic expressions and colloquialisms. It's just...fascinating. Pronunciation, too. Don't even get me started on a good accent. XD

[Ouroboros]

Those are some of my favorites too - Milton mostly. I study Milton pretty intensely. I've read nearly everything he's written (except the stuff in languages I can't read) and he's one of my all time favorites. Have you ever heard of Stanley Fish? I'm sure you have, but he wrote a couple beautiful books on Paradise Lost. He covers all sorts of stuff, including Satan's rhetoric. They're wonderful, and I would definitely suggest them.

Coleridge is fantastic, and Rime of the Ancient Mariner is just amazing. He's not my favorite Romantic (that title is a toss-up between Keats, Byron, and Shelley [Percy, not Mary]) but he sure did some wicked good work.

I'm actually re-reading (and finishing what I didn't read) Le Morte d'Arthur right now (a character in a story I'm writing is really into Arthurian legend). It's still fascinating.

As far as dystopia/utopia type literature goes, Brave New World is always great, as are the other classics (1984, Fahrenheit 451, Lord of the Flies, etc.) but one of my favorites is Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. It's wonderful. I'm also a big fan of Takami's Battle Royale.

I got into that stuff in high school, but didn't really enjoy it much until I started studying older stuff (Moore's Utopia, Plato's Republic, Butler's Erewhon). Once I started reading and studying the roots I found a new appreciation for the utopia/dystopia.

[Terenia]

I actually haven't heard of Stanley Fish. I'll look into him! If nothing else because of the awesome name he has. XD

I'm actually about....oh.....100 pages into The Handmaid's Tale right now....I put it on hiatus to read the Game of Thrones books, so I'm afraid it'll be awhile before I finish it, but I liked what I was reading before I got distracted. I'm a little ADD with my reading sometimes. I'm usually reading three to five books at once and eventually one or two win out over the rest.

[Ouroboros]

Fish is awesome. He's a grumpy old man and a fascinating literary critic/theorist. The two Fish books I have that relate to Paradise Lost are Surprised by Sin: The Reader in Paradise Lost and How Milton Works. They're awesome.

The Handmaid's Tale is so good. The Scrabble scenes with Offred and Commander Fred are just brilliant. It's one of the few books I've read recently that actually made me feel something. I know that sounds bad, but I've fallen into the habit of reading books for everything BUT their emotional content and it really sucks. P

[fan -freak121]

Hey I'm new here; obviously; I have loved Animorphs ever since I first started to read them since I was like 10 or 12. I love all the good guy characters but my favorites have got to be Rachel, Ax, Tobias and Marco. They are people I could totally get along with though I'd probably argue with Rachel as much as Marco; lol. I personally did not like the last book. Won't spoil it for anyone just in case someone never read the last book but I didn't like it at all.

[Ash]

Welcome to the forum, fan freak If you like, you can start your own introduction topic so everyone can welcome you properly

[KitsuneMarie]

I'm late to say hello, but hi! Glad you're here!

[Myitt]

Just FYI, Ouroboros, all you need to know about Marie?  Yeah she effin' rocks.