Step 7: A week in the life

Over the course of the past week, I have had the pleasure of speaking with a few prospective students during GSE's open house and webchat (more of each of theses sessions to come, so keep an eye on http://www.gse.upenn.edu/admissions_financial to learn more about these events). These conversations have reminded me of how difficult it was to imagine what my day-to-day life in this program would look like: What would my schedule be like? Would I feel more like a student or a teacher? Would it feel like college, or like holding a job? So today I'm going to give you a taste of my weekly schedule in case these are questions on your mind, too.

As suggested above, my weekdays are generally pretty booked from around 8am until 7pm (Thursday is the only night when class gets out later than that); however, I have managed to find approximately 10 hours during the week to work at an on-campus work-study job (in addition to this GA job for which I'm blogging). In terms of the schoolwork that is required outside of class time, I have found it very doable to fit it in at night and during our occasional free periods during the day. For example, I am currently sitting in the GSE computer lab typing this between classes and will soon go finish my reading for this evening's literacy class.

In terms of how I feel in this "in-between" student role, it certainly is different than college. Instead, my courses feel more like professional development - the best ones, in my opinion, are those during which we call upon our own experiences in the classroom to understand a concept taught in class, and vice versa. Most of our assignments also require that we draw on student-teaching experiences rather than document-based research (as explained in previous posts on the integrated assignments for Term II and Term III). Therefore, these don't really feel like the papers that I wrote as an undergrad (and best of all, we have no tests!). Like college, however, I do consistently have work that I could/should be doing even after the "work day" is over - there is always more to read, write, or plan. I guess that's something that won't be likely to change as a teacher, though, so why not get back into the habit of it now?!