life, apparently

Because I can't seem to tie this together into a coherent paragraph, I'll will bullet-fy it (yes, you can borrow this word I'm sure it will come in handy someday).

• At BestGradSchoolEver teaching was not encouraged, but regarded as a waste of time. When BestAdvisorEver found out I was teaching to pay for a car, he told me I should have asked for a raise instead. He was not joking.
• There are few women in my area. Women tend to be the teachers and men the researchers. (I spent the spring reading books like this). I do not want to be a statistic.
  
• My experiences as a teacher have been traumatic.
• Teaching is hard and is not rewarded (in the departments/institutions that will likley hire me, assuming someone hires me).
• I love research.

• I don't like bad evaluations. I don't need a distinguished teaching award, but I want to be above average.
• Someone is working 2 jobs so their kid can be educated. Or, like myself, someone will be paying off loans for the next 20 years for the privelege of taking my class. And I respect that.
  
• I remember awful teachers. If I ran into AnthropologyProfWhoSpitsWhenHeTalks or ZoologyGradStudent today, I'd probably tell them that their class was a complete fucking waste of time.
  

So, you see I am all conflicted. I'm not very good at teaching, but I think I could be. But it will take some effort, which is ok, I think. But I do not want to be The Woman Who Teaches.

I decided to teach this fall because I want to stop looking horrified when they ask me if I'd like to teach Intro during a job search. Or even worse, when I say "hmmm?" when they ask "How would you teach Intro to My Area for students at Bliss Univ?" My gut reaction is to say WTF, I don't know and I don't care?

I want to enjoy teaching. I want to be above average. I want to be able to say that my first few courses were a disaster because I was young and inexperienced. I do not want to replay them every semester.

Isolation U is a very well known school for undergrads. They have a very active teaching center that holds seminars year round (with free food!). I attended a couple of meetings in the spring and a couple this summer. Somehow I was inspired at the seminar last week and made plans to actually meet with a consultant one-on-one to work through all of this (even though the idea of it terrifies me). Maybe I'll be a good teacher after all. Hopefully.