Here we are at the beginning of another semester! I’m not sure if other online instructors get that familiar ‘back to school’ excitement during the first week, but I’m definitely feeling it. I’m excited to use my new planner, pens, and Post Its, and I’m ready to start ‘meeting’ my students as each college starts…
I’ll ask the controversial question: What’s the recipe for success as an adjunct instructor? Do you have a plan for being successful as an adjunct instructor? I know I certainly didn’t when I first started out, I was in my early twenties, just going with the flow and not thinking too much about it. I’m…
I don’t know if this is exclusive to women, but in our day and age, I get the impression that we all tend to feel like we’re supposed to do everything, do it well, and do it fairly easily. But as I’ve gotten older, and taken on more responsibility each year (a job with ever-increasing…
The transition from teaching predominantly in the classroom to teaching almost exclusively at home comes with a lot of adjustment, and if you’re not careful, it can become a slippery slope to barely teaching at all and/or losing a good chunk of your income. Here are 5 easy things I’ve done during the past four…
Have you ever been grading online assignments or replying to emails when it just felt like you were saying different versions of the same thing over and over again? I feel that way a lot of the time, and I know I’m not the only one. It turns out there’s actually a solution for this…
Working from home instead of driving to an office everyday can reduce stress in a number of ways, but it can also leave you feeling overwhelmed with both home and work responsibilities since there aren’t any real boundaries (for instance, trying to be professional during an exam review webinar while sitting in a messy house,…
Somehow the semester flew by, and somewhere around the beginning of November I started realizing that for the past few months I hadn’t fully taken advantage of the fact that I work from home, make my own hours, and can go do fun things with my little one whenever I want. I was working a…
I had a few other blog posts lined up to use this month, but I didn’t want to miss my opportunity to write a holiday-themed post (my favorite!). As online teachers know, sometimes the work we do at our computer year-round can get repetitive, but I like to break up the year by thinking about…
The other day I was reminded that what I do is very different from the usual 9 to 5 job. Someone made a reference to someone else having a “case of the Monday’s” (does Office Space get all the credit for that saying, or did that movie just popularize it?), and I realized I haven’t…
(Fair warning- this post isn’t all that inspirational, but I think it may be very helpful to some of you out there working from home! :)) When I first started teaching online and working from home, the pros definitely outweighed the cons (great income, relaxation, flexibility, etc.). However, I didn’t necessarily like sitting at my…