Confessions of a Graduate Teaching Assistant (GTA): Part One

I’ve always wanted to be a GTA. It wasn’t because they were doing amazing PhDs on their own desks, in which they cured cancer or published ground-breaking articles which they presented at world conferences. This was all pretty cool but actually, it had a lot to do with them being rubbish at teaching. As an undergraduate I saw them turn up late to lectures they were being paid to help with, chat with their colleagues and completely ignore any student of a different nationality from their own. They would stand right behind you in an exam breathing heavily, or when questioned on how to do the most impossible problem conceived by man, they would ask, “What do you think?” I always thought that it was startlingly clear that, at this point, being so confused and exasperated by this stupid question, that all I cared about was them telling me what I should be thinking. If there was one thing I was going to get right on my PhD it was being a good GTA.

Thus, on my first day I duly signed up for the most appropriate courses for my skills which all commenced after the training dates. I carefully considered my timetable so that I’d have time to read through all the lecture notes and do each tutorial from scratch. Feeling pleased with myself, I headed out for ‘just one pint’ with my new world famous and cancer curing colleagues.

The next morning seemed very early... and loud. The e-mail ping was painfully pitched; the e-mail turned out to be worse. “Thanks for agreeing to help with my lessons last night. It is the first tutorial so the students will probably only get onto questions 1-6. See you in an hour.”

An hour! Training was in a week! I clicked on the attachment. Problems vaguely reminiscent of three years past appeared on the screen. Well, theobviousthingtodowasneitherto start from scratch nor go through the lecture notes but to read the solutions of questions 1-6 on the sheet. These seemed fairly self-explanatory although I placed an asterisk beside a couple of harder parts for good measure and ran up to the teaching room... I only two to five minutes late. I was greeted by the overbearing person who had taken advantage of my drunken state; they turned out to be one of my favourite lecturers and we had a nice conversation about the summer. I heard a loud “Harrumph” from behind me. A number of obscenities occurred to me as I realised that I had been caught chatting and rushed over to my first student. He asked me about something beside which I had placed an asterisk, which was ideal. At no point did I ask him his opinion. Avoiding the chatty lecturer I circled the room, trying not to stand behind anyone. I wandered over to some nice but slightly foreign looking students, to see how they were getting on. They were on question 7, having breezed through 1-6. I retreated rapidly to the corner of British students,whowerestrugglingwithall myasteriskedpoints.HereIremained. After all they had loads of questions.

GTAing: It seems it is going to be harder than it looks.