Confessions of a GTA: Part Two

Sadly, this is true. In fact it is an acronym for ‘graduate teaching assistant’. You know, the ones standing at the front chatting to the professors instead of helping you out. Yep, I’m one of those and as far as I’m aware we do not steal cars, only solutions to questions when the lecturers truly overestimate our abilities. We do not get chased down by cops but by students in the last minute of a two hour tutorial, deciding that they don’t understand the entire subject so far. And we don’t go to glamorous parties. Well okay, maybe we do...

On the other hand, this week we found out in our training that we do something pretty cool. GTA training is compulsory for all students wanting to help out. If you don’t go, you don’t get paid, which of course means we all go but our interest is obviously driven by wanting to assist the future Imperial graduates. We are just those kind of people. It is three hours; what could they have to say that could possibly take that long?

Well, there is a lot of jargon, like learning styles: after a questionnaire, I turned out to be a reflective, visual, sequential, sensor learner. These are words meaning that I like to learn with pictures, not words, in an organised manner by learning step by step, not as part of a group. How I got through Imperial I have no idea! Apparently they cater for the completely opposite person. This strange species are active and intuitive. They like dealing with lots of theory in text and enjoy working with other people. The test basically said that I was, in effect a genius, as I managed to do a course taught entirely wrong for me. This clearly did not surprise me.

What did surprise me is the university’s opinion of us. They see us the front line of student interaction. We are the shield that stops students totally embarrassing themselves by asking a stupid question of a slightly crotchety lecture, who has had all their solutions stolen by some post-grad. We stand doggedly in the cold and wet preventing students walking into large machinery on field trips. We guide them through the first few days of hellish programming where nothing make sense and 1+1 no longer seems to work according to the computer. We are on the front line of feedback to tell students what isn’t and what is definitely a stupid question.

Thus, we may not be manic gamers convinced that what Felix really needs is a low down on what we do in a virtual reality each week, but we do have our uses. So next time you see us chatting away at the front, ask us a question, because if there is one thing GTAs are good at is answers; we stole the solutions.

The GTA