#taing

So, no one is more surprised than me that teaching discussion sections has become a thing that I actually enjoy. When I started even just applying for graduate schools, the thought of having to TA was an anxiety-inducing thought. I didn’t want to have to explain simple concepts to students, to have to grade, to have to repeat something I knew I understood again and again to make sure that the students would understand it.

As I reach (hopefully!) the end of teaching, I have to say that most of my assumptions of how terrible teaching would be have been unfounded. I don’t find it excessively tiring to explain concepts a few times, so long as I can ask questions of the class and see benchmarks for them learning new concepts and improving. I enjoy answering the questions that students have about basic things, and engaging them in debate about why concepts are important. I know that this form of teaching is probably quite different to preparing and giving lectures, but I do think that preparing lesson plans for the discussions is helping me learn how to present material for understanding, and check for understanding by asking probing questions. I also think that teaching discussions is amazing preparation for public speaking, something that I never thought about before. I’m stuck in a room with 25-30 students for an hour, and I have to keep them busy and engaged, and make sure that something sticks during the learning experience. It’s an excellent start for practicing public speaking and building up to full-on public speaking, since it’s to a moderate number of people who have mixed feelings about actually being there. Honestly, in the fairly short time that I’ve been giving discussions, I think that I’ve improved in my presentation skills and engageability.

Girl student and Me: *discussing Captain Marvel while I was helping her with homework*

Boy student: *Butting in, literally no one asked him* It was okay. I thought it was too political.

the final stretch before winter break!!!

biggest news: i dropped out of my short fiction class. i’ve had it with that BS. the session on monday was cancelled again (third time this semester) and i’m sure the professor is not at fault for it but that doesn’t really make it easier to come up with a topic for my term paper. this class needed an enormous amount of time and work and i have learned nearly nothing so far. so i dropped out. sometimes that’s just what you gotta do.

that means i can focus on my ecocrit paper instead! that’s great, because i’m actually pumped beyond belief for that stuff. i’ve already started on my research reading and i’m pretty confident it’s going to be very very good.

related: i will be streaming a playthrough of Journey on Twitch to record commentary for my term paper sometime during the winter break i think. or maybe after, depending on how well the research is going. either way, i’ll post a link here if anyone’s interested to hear some details about how video games are actually super useful for ecocriticism :D

TAing: i spent the weekend working through the stack of reading reports that has been waiting on my desk for over a week and to be honest, the situation is a little dire. i’ll propose to the teacher that i’d like to hold an extra session / workshop type of thing to focus on the term paper, formalities, structure, how to approach it, helping out with finding topics etc etc. hopefully the students will be interested in that. their papers are due on March 1, which is way sooner than usual for the winter semester, i hope they all have an eye on that. anyone who still doesn’t have a topic after the winter break should really hurry up with that....