TA

by ViTo • April 18, 2007 2 comments

I have been a student most of my life. When you’re young you don’t like it at all: you only go because you’re made to; as you grow up you tend to get used to it and by high school you have your own little world going on in and outside school. For most people these are the best years. Then, you move on to college, and as you get close to the end of your student life, you wish it were over already. You’re anxious to get a job and start making money. The funny thing is, as soon as you get that job, you realize that the student life you’ve always been complaining about is much better than real life and the hard work it implies.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a lazy person, I’ll work when I have to and I’ll give it all, but when trying to make a decision this was one of the arguments to go back to college as a graduate student. And that’s what I did . However, this time is a bit different for me, cause being a student in an American university I have to consider the cost of the university (in Spain it is like 500$ per semester). So Far, I have a fellowship which pays for these university fees, but that means at any given time I may be asked to perform tasks for the university so I can partly cover my expenses. The two first quarters in UCI flew by, and then, as we’ve reached the third one, they asked me to be a TA, which means a Teaching Assistant.

Yes, you’ve heard it right: I am gonna be a teacher! It is not just that I have never done this before, but I am not that keen on public speaking either; and obviously the thing gets worse if I can’t speak in my native language. Apparently, here it is not such a big deal and many grad students do it in order to cover their fees, so there I was… All they told me was: “you have to do problems from the book and help students”, so I definitely felt quite lost. Shouldn’t I get more info? Shouldn’t I have more preparation? Apparently not.

Before the actual lecture, I pictured myself in front of an auditorium filled with people, and I didn’t like the vision at all! although reality would not be like that, I still was pretty nervous. The first lecture was on a Wednesday at 8 o’clock in the morning. As I was getting there, I didn’t know what to expect and finally I got to the classroom and nobody was there! Believe it or not, I felt relieved, and thought that maybe I could postpone my first time for a whole week. However, two minutes later my first student arrived, and when I saw his face all my pressure went away. He looked kind of intimidated, so I felt relaxed cause I knew he was probably thinking something like “pfff, I’m alone with the teacher”.

This time relaxed, I started the lecture, everything went smoothly and the rest of my students kept arriving. The content was boring though; but hey there’s not much I can do about that! The 50 minutes went by pretty fast (at least for me) and soon my first lecture was over…

I’m guessing the next step will be to improve my teaching skills and hopefully my students will not get too bored during that process. Sorry guys