Got my letter from the English Composition department. I will not be teaching English 115 in the fall.
GAH.
They said that they just had too many qualified applicants. Yeah. Still makes me feel like I suck. And now I will have graduated with my masters degree with no teaching experience whatsoever, which is not going to look good on either Ph.D. applications or junior college teaching positions. I also will have no job in the fall, since this internship is set to end at the end of June, and even if it doesn’t, I can’t see me working as hard as I have been while writing my thesis.
Of course, there are “other opportunities for grad students.” Yeah, like Research Assistantships that only let you work for 10 hours a week. That will NOT pay rent. Or “every once in a great while they hire grad students in the writing center.” Yeah. Great. The only thing that seems remotely possible to me is a chance to TA in one of the literature survey courses: Early British Lit, Later British Lit, and American Lit. I have no idea how much they pay, but it’s got to be better than a Research Assistant. I checked out the schedule for Fall, and. . .
Dr. Steven Walker is teaching a section of Later British Lit.
You may remember that Dr. Walker was my undergraduate mentor, and is my thesis committee chair. I’ve sent him an e-mail.
If he’s already got a TA, I’ll move on to Dr. Fox, who co-taught (with Dr. Walker) the Tolkien and film class I took last fall. And then on to Zina Petersen, who was my Modern American Usage teacher in my undergrad, or David Paxman, who I worked with on a research project for my Intro to Grad Studies class last fall. And then I’m out of options, and will have to either stay at home next semester, get a student loan, or both.
*headdesk*
This is so not good.