Confessions of a GTA: Part 4

As an undergrad, field trips were always best in hindsight. Those hours on a windblown moor in the back of beyond in the pouring rain seemed later like quite a laugh and that time you nearly got impaled on machinery by an irate Scottish factory worker who did not care how interested you were in the manufacturing was, looking back, an “adventure”. The stress of finishing notes, living with some random on your course who you had never heard speak until now, and trying to understand what exactly your Professor was yelling over a gale force wind, for most people were the good times of the course. I, as a keen indoor sportsman, remember it without the rose tint.

You can imagine my horror when my supervisor looked hopefully across the desk from me, having indicated he really could use help on this trip which was, of course, over the weekend. Battered by his assurances that it never rained on this trip and thinking of it as a paid day out, I resignedly agreed. I immediately went and cleared the sale of the closest outdoor shop just in case.

So there I stood, handing out notes to people I did not know at 8am on a very cold Saturday morning. The weather forecast was stormy. I tried desperately to work out how much I would be paid every second only to realise that actually made it more depressing. Then suddenly we were all on the coach, setting off to a hellish nowhere to look at nothing in particular.

But to my surprise, I did not have to look at nothing in particular, make notes on something I did not understand, or try and draw a picture of a piece of equipment whose purpose was not entirely clear. Instead I got to stand at the back of a well-behaved group of people, being plied with tea and chocolate by the other lecturers on the trip. I did not even have to worry about timings or the teaching. This the staff assured me was their problem. My main purpose seemed to be to prevent the students walking into the road, which they managed pretty well on their own, with only one or two near death incidents.

It turned out to, be quite sunny and I could even remove my nice new microfleece, hat, waterproof trousers and gloves and pretend I was on the beach. This was great and was rapidly improved by a very nice three course dinner in the hotel. I even got my own room. Yes, it was not a hotel that I would have picked by myself, but hey, I was being paid for this. Not to mention the slightly random layout meaning that my bathroom was huge, actually massive. So a nice free dinner and pint later I could quite comfortably fall asleep in front of the TV. I could get used to field trip GTAing.