Hey, look! A post that’s not about The New Development!

Anyway.

Grad school has commenced.  And with it, a major shift in what my GA duties will entail, which is AWESOME.  I’m not going to make it a habit to talk about work, but I will mention what the new changes are.

First of all, I was supposed to be a lab assistant. Cake job, really, hang out in iMac lab and wait for people to need help.  The job really doesn’t get much easier than that.  The hardest challenge I was staring down was that of listening to contemporary christian music all day. 

Last week, I got an email from my academic advisor, who wanted to know if I could help with an Apple training next week.  I didn’t respond, because I was already scheduled to help, and figured I’d just wait and tell her so in person on Tuesday.

WELL!  I think that if I’d responded, I would have had MY OWN OFFICE! And on the first floor, far, far away from music about Him.  Ah well, that’s the only negative thing of this whole deal.  My position is no longer lab assistant, but one of being a go-to person for training and supporting the faculty on how to use the iBooks in class.  In case you forgot, UM is requiring all students in the College of Ed to purchase iBooks by next year. (This year it was "STRONGLY recommended."  I did because I really needed to upgrade, and wanted to take advantage of the great deal.)  However, when you require every student to buy an iBook, you need to make sure that they are being used — and that’s where I come in.

I will be holding some mini-workshops, have ‘lab hours’ where faculty can drop in for some help, be available to go to faculty offices for assistance, and also be available to assist in their classes. IE: "I want to do this technology thing, but am scared/worried about what to do if it doesn’t work out, can you help?"  HELL. YES. 

Those of you who’ve been reading along for the last four years, this is basically Americorps redux…. I swear, Americorps was the best thing I ever did in my life, ever.  (And not just because I met AnneMarie! — on that note, though, AM: my advisor is an old friend of KS, they went to college together.)  This is exactly what I want to do. So much more challenging, and much more work for sure, but so much more valuable to me in the long run.  This is the pilot year for this program, and I get to be a part of it.  Just like I was part of the first statewide 1:1 computing initiative by teaching middle school.  I am way, way excited.

I had my first 1:1 yesterday with a prof who loved me. She got it. She understood what I was all about right away, and was really excited to have me show her how to un-hide threaded email convos in First Class.  She had asked IT Help several times, but they are student staffed, condescending as all fuck (trust me) and she could never figure it out.  I had her turned around right in 2 minutes. She was impressed.

In helping her, I talked about my past experience, what i wanted to do, what my strengths are, etc etc — and I brought up my million dollar idea.  She immediately wanted to set me up with someone from the business department, someone who could figure out the business end of it. I’m telling you, this is a fucking GREAT IDEA. So great that i won’t even write it down here, sorry. It’s THAT GOOD.

So, already I know that grad school was the right decision.  I was worried about not making enough money, or whatever, and Marilyn had said way back when "it’s not what you’ll learn, it’s who you’ll meet."  And now, I’m going to be meeting a lot of people that AREN’T undergrads trying to figure out iMovie. That is SO COOL.