Today I spent the entire day on campus learning how to be a Teaching Assistant, meeting my professors, meeting my fellow graduate students, and touring the local art resources. This is the Arts Building, where I'll be spending the majority of my time.
UCR is a big school, but not as big as the U of M. There are 3 basic rooms for all of the art history classes here, but the school boasts about a dozen faculty members and a significant number of majors. I am one of 9 first-year graduate students and 15 second(+) years. That means we'll get a lot of individual attention, which is great. Everyone has the opportunity to be a TA -- and that means leading a "discussion" class, or a small subset of the students in a large-scale lecture class. The TAs are able to expand upon topics in the lecture classes and do "real" teaching. I'm not sure how excited I am to tackle that, but I don't have to worry about it until March when I'll be so much smarter than I am now.
My classes start on Thursday and I'll be taking 3 this quarter. The first is 19th century art and I'm looking forward to this class because it's with a professor I'm really excited about. The second class is about art history "methods." I think this is basically a history of art history class where we discuss the schools of thought art historians have gone through over the last several centuries. I've been told it's the worst class in the world -- interesting but tedious. My third class is 20th century art and we just found out today that we have to read an entire book by next Tuesday. So I am a little scared!
I also learned today that I can get an internship at a local museum -- the California Museum of Photography. I guess it is the 2nd largest museum of its kind in the country and it seemed like a first-class place. They need lots of help and cater to the needs of their interns; if I want to study early 20th century German photography, I can. If I want to study the history of film cameras, I can. They will find things for me to do that fit with my interests. Best of all, I can have all of my research published on their website so it's like I'd be doing a real job that I can brag about on my resume. Someday.
UCR is a big school, but not as big as the U of M. There are 3 basic rooms for all of the art history classes here, but the school boasts about a dozen faculty members and a significant number of majors. I am one of 9 first-year graduate students and 15 second(+) years. That means we'll get a lot of individual attention, which is great. Everyone has the opportunity to be a TA -- and that means leading a "discussion" class, or a small subset of the students in a large-scale lecture class. The TAs are able to expand upon topics in the lecture classes and do "real" teaching. I'm not sure how excited I am to tackle that, but I don't have to worry about it until March when I'll be so much smarter than I am now.
My classes start on Thursday and I'll be taking 3 this quarter. The first is 19th century art and I'm looking forward to this class because it's with a professor I'm really excited about. The second class is about art history "methods." I think this is basically a history of art history class where we discuss the schools of thought art historians have gone through over the last several centuries. I've been told it's the worst class in the world -- interesting but tedious. My third class is 20th century art and we just found out today that we have to read an entire book by next Tuesday. So I am a little scared!
I also learned today that I can get an internship at a local museum -- the California Museum of Photography. I guess it is the 2nd largest museum of its kind in the country and it seemed like a first-class place. They need lots of help and cater to the needs of their interns; if I want to study early 20th century German photography, I can. If I want to study the history of film cameras, I can. They will find things for me to do that fit with my interests. Best of all, I can have all of my research published on their website so it's like I'd be doing a real job that I can brag about on my resume. Someday.
3 comments:
Good luck with the start of classes! I hope you love them all. You are going to be so super smart!!!
miss you....Becky
I was watching a show on travel channel or food network about Pink's famous hotdog place in LA. It made me think of you!
Okay...so, I didn't know that you have a blog. So do I!!! I love the updates and everything about your life. So exciting!
our blog spot is
www.weyhrauch.blogspot.com
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