Confessions of a GTA: Part 6

As an undergraduate, if you had asked me what the worst thing was about Imperial it was obvious: The exams. After working all those hours to be hit with the striking realisation that I did not, in fact, understand the topic even a little bit caused me to doubt many a life decision. I also came to doubt my native English following one particularly bad exam where I distinctly remember no verbs in the first two sentences. But never did I consider what happened to that stack of papers the GTAs insisted on counting for five minutes at least 12 times after the end of the exam. I was asked to mark one of my class’s mid-term tests, the standard ‘Oh, but we want you to understand your progress, nothing to worry about, but since you are all here it can be a horrifically weighted piece of coursework that you might fail’ kind of thing. This was finally my chance to get revenge. I would be one of those awful GTAs that wrote nothing in feedback and in general gave marks lower than your wildest imagination. What I did not expect to hit me was compassion. I have taught these students for two months now. I have struggled alongside them with techniques they will probably never use again... ever. I even sat with them in the exam and tried not to stand behind them or take too long to count the scripts at the end. I found myself rejoicing in their success, in those beautiful but startlingly rare papers which were close to the mark scheme and extraordinarily correct. These were, however, the unicorn papers that were like a needle in a haystack or really just a stack. More commonly, I was assaulted by additional issues and, finally, broken hearted by being unable to read what people had written. This was frustrating. We would get halfway through a problem and suddenly it became a maze of lines and artistic but illegible squiggles and nearly always, always, wrong at the end. I couldn’t help them and pull them back from the oblivion of failure simply because I had no idea what was going on. 4s suddenly appeared or disappeared seemingly at random or life became some sort of integration with no limits or possible answer. I know I was never a unicorn, but the shining lights for me were those people who admitted their weaknesses. A simple note to say I have forgotten the definition of sinh. I have assumed it is this. Or I think it went wrong here. These were the people that got the method marks as were those who had bad handwriting but spread everything out. I could save these people. So at two in the morning, having lost the will to live, wondering what in heck did I teach these people, a GTA does not expect to see a unicorn, but a nicely laid out paper with the mistakes clearly marked. This was the Holy Grail.