TA

One of the requirements for us as PhD students in the Epi department is that we have to TA a class.

This is not the glamorous job it may seem at first glance.

First off, I have to sit in class every week for a three hour lecture that goes over material I have heard about 20x. Now, this doesn't mean that I remember everything perfectly, but guys? Epi class is boring enough to sit to through one time.

Add to that, the professor occasionally says things about medicine that are patently false (he is not a clinician) -- for instance yesterday he said there was no rabies vaccine -- which is FINE except when a student questions something? I can't exactly run in and interject what we learn in med school. It just doesn't work that way. So I have to sit there horribly uncomfortable while he tells the students wrong crap. Ad nauseum. Does this sound fun to you?

FWIW the seats are also horribly uncomfortable, and would be that way even if I wasn't pregnant. So I sit squirming in mental and physical anguish the entire lecture.

I thought office hours were going to be painful, but so far they haven't been. The two students I've seen have been bright, lovely individuals, who ask good questions and are respectful. I almost wish more of them would come to office hours because?

Everyone else is BOMBING the homeworks.

Now, I know that when I was a student, I fantasized that teachers took perverse pleasure in marking students down on homeworks and exams. Let me dispel that notion once and for all.

First, it is SO MUCH easier to grade a HW where everyone gets the answers right. When students start getting wrong answers, I do what I like to call the partial credit dance. I try really really hard to give my students as much partial credit as I can. Sometimes it's really difficult because they don't show their work, or because I can't figure out what they did if they did show their work.

Second, the professor likes asking really really tricky questions that honestly belong in the reading comprehension section of the MCAT more so than on an Epi HW assignment. True, it's good to teach the kids to read carefully. But COME ON. And then I get to deal with the fallout when they receive their grades.

Students: I have to tell you, if you want to discuss a HW with a TA? The best approach is NOT to tell the TA that it was unfairly graded. What is a TA supposed to do with that? If we agree (which is possible, we don't invent the questions or the grading schemes in most cases), we STILL can't change your grade because then we would have to change everyone elses too. You are much better off going to the TA to ask them to clarify concepts and whatnot. We are relatively powerless to improve fairness in the classes we teach.

Third, I know that once I pass out a bunch of HWs with bad grades on them, I will get a number of students coming to me complaining that I was unfair. Remember how I said that office hours were not that bad in the past? Well, next week I am DREADING them.

Look students, I really would like to help you learn. And unfortunately, Epidemiology is a really dry topic where professors like to drill you on obnoxious details and trick you in the ways in which questions are worded. So PLEASE pay a bit more attention to detail and read the questions on the HWs carefully. Please LOOK UP definitions when you're doing your work. And please don't think we're out to get you. I'm just a TA. I have no power. Believe it or not, I remember what it was like to be in your shoes. I really am there to help you to learn, but it makes me very uncomfortable to have to argue about fairness. Especially regarding decisions I did not make.