Tuesday, October 31, 2017

Weeks of 10/16 and 10/23

Again, apologies for the double-post, first week's post slipped my mind entirely.
Now that we're well into second-exam material, I've noticed the course content is getting significantly more sophisticated.  Most notably, circuit analysis and magnetic fields.  The former I'm able to help with very well, since I'm taking circuits right now, but magnetic fields haven't come back to me as easily as the other concepts.  For the first time, I've actually had to look back in my old notes and re-learn the concepts myself!  A lot of the time, enough students come to my office hours at once that they like to collaborate with each other while I'm helping one out, but it's slightly humiliating trying to work out an answer for a concept you don't fully remember and then getting the wrong answer anyway.  I'm definitely reaching a point as a UTA where I'm going to have to put in more effort than just showing up to class, grading, and office hours if I want to make sure I'm not as equally lost as the students coming into my hours.
Grading and lecture attendance has been going as usual.  I haven't been able to make some lectures on account of interviews, but I do consistently make Friday lectures.  It's certainly getting harder to find the motivation to wake up and get to a lecture 2-3 hours before my next class when I only answer maybe 1 or 2 clicker questions per lecture.  Perhaps there's a better way to utilize UTAs in this regard?

-Jeffrey Socash

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