Teaching Statements

(This is another post in a series on job-market related things. Previous entries can be found here.)

Teaching statements are kind of easy, but they’re hard to feel good about. Mostly, that’s because they’re about how to be a good teacher, or perhaps more specifically, about why you are a good teacher. And explaining what makes someone a good teacher is a lot like trying to teach someone how to teach. If you try to do it in words, you’ll probably end up saying the obvious and obviously inane: “be engaging, be well-prepared, foster an active learning-environment, make room for everybody, etc.” Yeah, that really clears it up!

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Abstracts

Let’s turn to dissertation abstracts. (This is another post in a series on job-market related things. Previous entries can be found here.)

The dissertation abstract that you produce as part of your job market dossier gives a brief overview of your dissertation, much like an abstract of an article gives a brief overview of the article. But it also does a whole lot more, and I want to mostly focus on that “more.”

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Dialogue

“I love you very much.”

“Why do you love me?”

“Because you’re excellent, sweet, and really wonderful.”

“No, because I’m me!”