Wednesday, November 15, 2017

Weeks of 10/30 and 11/6

Another exam week so not much to say.  I had to proctor the exam, which involved passing out exams and scantrons and fielding questions to graduate TAs as appropriate.  Dr. Hong was originally not supposed to be there that morning but showed up eventually, which certainly made the process easier.
As for course content, I'm still in the same spot as previously when it comes to helping students in that I can reliably field most questions.  However, there have been a few online homework questions where I consulted my old notes, checked and re-derived formulae, and still could not come to a correct answer.  Thankfully, I don't get the blame most of the time, and most kids just say they'll ask one of the graduate TAs.  Aside from those rare cases, though, I've still been able to help most kids out just fine, and office hours are pretty heavily weighed towards Thursdays as usual.  I had a student email me a problem but I didn't see the email until the morning of a lecture where the exact same problem was explained on the board, so I lucked out in that regard.
As for lecture presence, I've made it a goal to attend more often since being singled out to help proctor the exam.  Last Friday, I showed up late and was the only UTA there, which I imagine must have been pretty frustrating for Hong.  It's hard to find motivation to go, though; I feel as though UTAs are pretty underutilized.  I feel like I spend about 5 minutes max per lecture going around and helping with clicker questions, and even then it's rare I get called on.  Hong also seems to be relegating explaining clicker questions to student volunteers instead of UTAs, even though it was one of the few things we actually did in lecture except show up.  All in all, hard to find motivation to wake up hours earlier than my first actual class to attend the lecture and spend only a few minutes actually doing my job.

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