It’s going to be an interesting fall quarter. This fall I will be a Teaching Assistant for the first time in my UCLA career. Being a TA is a bigger deal at UCLA than it has been in my experiences as a TA at Fuller Seminary and Messiah College. You have to apply for the ability to get a TAship as if it is a fellowship and then you are assigned to a class that needs TAs. Of the available courses, I’m hoping for the first of three Western Civ. classes (ancient civilizations). Even though the system feels a little crazy, I am glad that it actually takes up four of the twelve units I need to fill.

My advisor, Bartchy, is teaching the course Religious Environment of Early Christians, which I will attend and write a paper for. I am trying to make all of my course papers relevant to my plans for a dissertation which has to do with apocalyptic thought and social identity. Perhaps I’ll write a paper on emperor worship for the course.

So, TA spot = 4 units. Bartchy class = 4 units. I’ve got four more to kill. But the thing is, I’ve been overhauling it every quarter that I’ve been at UCLA, with two major academic papers per quarter. I want make sure I don’t have any other major papers or exams. So, UCLA allows grad students to sign up for these two sort of catch-all, directed-reading kinds of classes: 596 and 597. For one, you get a grade for producing something; the other is designed for comprehensive exam prep. With that in mind, Ra’anan Boustan is allowing me to read along with his upper division undergrad seminar on martyrdom as a 597 exam prep course. It also covers material I hope to work into my dissertation.

So, this fall: teaching about ancient civilizations, writing about first-century emperor worship, and reading about ancient martyrdom . . . not to mention making sure I’m prepared to present my SBL paper Seems like it will be a challenging, but doable quarter.