Exciting Upcoming Workshops

I’ve got a bunch of workshops that I am looking forward to attending this week. These are the last workshops that the NCSU graduate school is offering this semester.

First off, to add to my teaching skills, I have an online workshop on “Establishing Authority and Credibility in the Classroom“. This work is paced through the week and I look forward to improving my knowledge of the core fundamentals in teaching.

To shake off the lazy Monday blues, I have signed up for a professional development seminar, “Applying for Nationally Competitive Postdoc Funding: The NASA Postdoctoral Program”, which should be a very interesting and informative session. On Wednesday, I will be attending the seminar, “Preparing for Career Opportunities at US National Laboratories”. Even if finishing my PhD, leave alone applying for post doctoral positions, seems like a distant dream, I think that attending these seminars would give me invaluable insight on how I can plan my journey in grad school and shake off procrastination with oodles of motivation. With as highly motivating career-development seminars as these two, I hope to get completely re-energized and buckle up my researcher shoes.

Readers, I hope you are as excited as I am as I will be posting details on how the seminars were and what I learned from them very soon!

First FIT Workshop!

I am excited to report that I attended my first Fundamentals in Teaching (FIT) workshop since I started on my career development program, today! I took heed to Maria’s instructions in the The Sound of Music and started from the very beginning- a very good place to start, indeed- Introduction to Teaching.

I learned a lot today and the workshop presenters- Dr. Barbi Honeycutt and Susanna Klingenberg  did a wonderful job of keeping the energy and information flowing in a fun environment. They definitely got me excited at the prospect of teaching my own class, so I would call this workshop a grand success.

I’ll post a detailed reflection of what I’ve learned from this workshop very soon- so stay tuned! Meanwhile, here’s a sneak peak into some of the things I learned today:

Yes! We learned about Bloom’s Taxonomy! And more! And yes, it deserves all the exclamation marks!

Flim-Flam Man Yarns and Other Cape Fear Stories

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book was one amongst the almost 100 that I latched my hands on at the Annual Book Sale held at The Brickyard on NCSU Main Campus.

I loved this wonderful collection of short stories all based around Cape Fear and North Carolina. The book contains four sets of short stories including Cape Fear country yarns, the adventures of Mordecai Jones, the “Flim-Flam Man” and his sidekick Curley, melancholy tales from the tobacco fields of North Carolina in depression era and concluding with a poignant fantasy tales which were truly a lagniappe indeed.

It was a lot of fun when local names kept popping up in the stories- even Hillsborough Street and North Carolina State University (NCSU) are mentioned. I highly recommend Guy Owen’s work, especially to NCSU students and everyone from North Carolina. Fun fact- Guy Owen studied at UNC Chapel Hill and worked at NCSU. I will definitely be on the lookout for his full length novels and more short story collections.

Greetings!

When Dr. Melissa Bostrom, the Director of Graduate and Academic Professional Development at North Carolina State University asked me to think about a project that would set me on the path of career development, while creating a tangible product that would benefit the graduate student community, blogging seemed like a natural answer.

I have had a serious case of writer’s block for the past five years, so be warned! This blog might trigger those flood-gates open. While blogging is definitely fun (except when in painful throes of said writer’s block), the aim of this page is multi-fold. My career goal is focused on academia and I plan to get plenty of research and teaching experiences while in NCSU, along with the stellar education that I have already been enjoying for the past two years. I am lucky to be in grad school at a University that concerns itself with the futures of its students. Taking advantage of the wonderful Preparing Future Leaders initiative at NCSU has been one the best decisions I have made.  As a part of obtaining a Certificate of Career Development from the NCSU Graduate School, I have been tasked with creating a teaching philosophy statement by the end of this year.

So readers, I am divesting myself off the following responsibility on to you- keeping me on track with my goals and help me stay motivated. Hopefully it will be an informative and fun read for you as well as I promise to try and include some candy bars in the vegetables.

Looking forward to all your inputs!

Cheers!