This past semester was pretty intense. I took my Ph.D. preliminary exams, all five of them, and defended my dissertation project. Everything went fine, even though I lost a bit of weight along the way. So now I'm in the ABD (all but dissertation) status, which means no more classes and the only "little" thing to do is to write a dissertation. I hope that won't take too long.

Also, this was my first semester of teaching. I was a discussion instructor for Literature of Europe (Part 1). My first ever college teaching experience was great! Teaching in an American classroom, was both quite a challenge and an adventure. The writing part of the course was 50% electronic. Students submitted essays online every week (there was a web-site with a discussion forum for the class). I had to fill out a grading form, write comments in every rubric, and send those back to each of my 40 students. Oh, I haven't done so much emailing in a while! Term papers and written exams were pretty similar to those one would have in Ukraine. Evidently, good writing is not a given for a native speaker. In addition to general language competence one should train oneself to write clearly.

The discussions were a lot of fun -- and rather unpredictable. I learned that most of my students believe in destiny and think that people can only direct a few minor things in their lives because the outcome is pre-determined. What happened to American "I can do it!" attitude? Besides, the kids are very aware of gender and race discrimination and unfairness as a big part of everyday reality. The discussions of male-female roles in antiquity often led to skepticism about Hillary Clinton's chance to be elected a president. Discussing Shakespeare's The Tempest revealed that all the black students identified with the native characters, while white kids were always on the side of the European invaders.

However, the biggest “Wow!” for me was to learn how religious my students seemed to be! About 75% of them were graduates of Catholic schools and sometimes their papers sounded more like sermons rather than academic writings. Definitely, they knew much more about the Bible and religious norms than I did. I had a student who came up to me after a class and said that he was a member of a Christian fraternity. Half way through the semester he realized how one-sided his worldview was. He said that it was hard for him to open up and put himself in the position of someone else, yet he very much wanted to discover different perspectives and only then make his choices. Events like that made me forget the sleepless nights spent grading papers. They contributed to a sense that I'm not wasting my time here.

Well, my student life is also good. I was a coordinator of a psychoanalysis discussion group. Fellow grad students met every other week to drink beer and talk about Lacan, Freud, and our understanding of the surrounding world. Currently I'm a vice president of the Comparative Literature Graduate Student Association and we're thinking of organizing a conference next year. Besides, there was a lot of salsa dancing and biking this semester. My friends and I achieved a record of 50 miles of biking in one day. Good thing the bikes didn't break!

So, I'm happy with what I've got and am looking forward to the spring semester starting this coming Monday. I will teach Literature of Europe and the Americas (Part 2) and I expect that this time it will be even better than last semester!