Teaching

I don't think I've posted recently about the situation regarding my teaching job for next year, at one of the other universities here in the city. I had to apply for it (as it's a union post), but had informal word about three weeks ago from the head of the history department that my appointment has been approved. I should be receiving my contract and all the official stuff in July. So that's quite exciting.

Must knuckle down and start preparing for it, though. I have thirteen two-hour lectures to write (*gulp*), covering two hundred years of British history. To this end, I've been ordering free inspection copies of relevant books from publishers today (nice little perk, that - cos God knows I'm not doing this for the money).

I also checked the university's registration website today and got two very nice surprises. First, the enrollment for this class is capped at 50, which is absolutely excellent (given that this is a second-year undergraduate survey course, I had fears of lecturing to an amorphous mass of 100 or more). Second, 40 people have already registered for the course! I suspected it might be rather popular - they don't have any British history specialists on staff in this particular department, and I think it's been quite a few years since this course was offered. Given that the department is small (hence the small class sizes), I'm sure many of the students would be keen to take a survey course in a new subject area.

Needless to say, I'm nervous about the huge amount of work and responsibility that teaching this course will entail, but quite excited too. Climbing back on the academic hobby-horse after so many years will doubtless be a bit daunting.