Week of 9/18

Class: PHYS 0175 (Hong)

This week was a fairly ordinary one. As usual, I try to attend lectures as often as I can. I made all three lectures this week. Hong decided to shorten the time on clicker questions after I brought up some student feedback during the grading session, so I saw less patrolling the room to field questions (I didn't even get up once during the Friday lecture).  UTA lecture seems to diminish as the week progresses, so I prioritize attending Friday lectures the most.

As for the grading sessions, the TAs and UTAs reached a consensus that the quantitative problems Hong assigns make for frustrating grading experiences, as including numbers results in many plug-and-chug techniques that make discerning a full-credit answer difficult (particularly when grading in a short time period is a concern). Hong said he will try to assign problems with strictly variables in the upcoming homeworks, so hopefully grading will be less frustrating.

I was assigned to patrol the CourseWeb homework discussion board this week, but it got absolutely no traffic so I didn't post anything. Hong has actually noticed this as well, and has posted that he might close down the board if it doesn't get any use.

My office hours are seeing the same pattern again: perhaps one or two students showing up on Tuesday (if it all), and then a massive influx of students on Thursday right before the work is due. I even had one of my former floormates text me asking for help during my evening lab monitor shift. Of course it's expected that a lot of people will delay in starting their work until close to the due date, but I feel like consistently having to rotate between helping anywhere from 5-8 students at once on Thursday is a bit excessive. Fortunately another UTA for Hong comes in right after so it's an easy matter of passing the torch to him once my hours are finished. Still, it's sometimes very frustrating having to deal with so many people unable to understand homework at once, and I'm not sure if it's just students being students or a problem with how homework is written and assigned.

Again, a regular week. Office hour attendance is definitely getting larger as each week progresses, though. I only expect it to increase even further as the first midterm approaches. I'm sure it'll be busy but I have confidence I'll be able to be of help to the class.

-Jeffrey Socash