Oh, my, it’s time again for the year to begin! Welcome week, beginning-of-year meetings, and book purchasing has all begun…how I love the promise of a new semester! The reunions with old friends! The picture-hanging throughout my (new!!) apartment!
The past three weeks have been a blast and a blur. Earlier in the summer I described the internship I’d be doing with Prof. Fritz Breithaupt for the Intensive Freshman Seminars; well, the students arrived three weeks ago, and the class began. Although Fritz and I had done extensive planning, I still wasn’t sure just what my role in the class would be: Teacher? Mentor? Idea generator? Writing tutor? I figured I’d slip into that which was most necessary and most natural to me when the time came.

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And, amazingly, it happened just that easily. My first move was to hold office hours; “Will I be able to answer their questions?” I wondered, “Will I make them feel comfortable coming to me, and will it be useful to them?” But my worries, it seems, were in vain, because that day’s hours, and those of the days and weeks following, were a success. I helped organize thoughts and structure writing, clarify taught ideas and brainstorm new ones. I made some mistakes, but Fritz was a helpful and trusting instructor to me, calmly guiding me back on the right path. Incredibly, I was even able to have three 1-1 ½ hour sessions of teaching the actual class, something that absolutely terrified me to begin with. But again, Fritz gave me great feedback, and, confident and laid back, allowed me the freedom to mess up.

Just attending the class as an intern, though, was extremely interesting as well; for the first time I paid close attention to the way Fritz would teach a topic—everything from the strategies/activities he’d introduce to keep students interested, to how much he would give away during discussion vs. how much he’d let the students discover…so much goes into being an effective teacher!

But, perhaps equally important and less expected was the closeness that I ultimately felt with my students. Sharing meals (possibly the only IFS class that ate together twice a day), spending up to four hours in a day doing office hours, and running through the arboretum’s sprinklers at 11 p.m. fostered really great friendships, and taught me a lot about people overall.
Plus, I know they’re awesome ‘cause they sang a song to me at “Coffeehouse Night”…and then threw things at me.