Confessions of a GTA: Part 9

This week’s confession is pretty bad. Most of the time I enjoy GTAing. The students are nice and unusually polite, but in every class there are always students you try to avoid. These have been getting more frequent and must stop for our sanity. So here are a few you might recognise:

The Safety Blanket:

These ones which catch GTAs like spiders in a web. “Could you help me start this one off?” is normally a sure sign. Once they snatch you, that’s it, you are there to the bitter end of a question. No matter if they are doing great by themselves, they need the attention in order to be able to do any question. Their brains simply cannot work properly if there is not someone on hand to sort everything out. The worst thing about these people is that they are normally quite good and their craving need for attention means other people who really are struggling miss out.

The Impossible:

These people believe that if they cannot do the question, it is impossible. There is absolutely no point in checking their own work for mistakes or checking with a friend, because they are perfect and the question is wrong. Normally these will have breezed through any prior work to a session, because it was easy, but strangely none of their answers match those given.

The Question Master:

There is always one in every year. They are the ones who ask the questions after a terribly boring guest lecture, which is useful, as to be honest, who can think of anything anyway? But during a marked lab or demonstration, it is not the time. Keep these burning questions for after, everyone else has to pass too.

The Google it:

These are quite often well-meaning students, who simply are not doing enough work. They ask politely about something, but after about five seconds with them, it dawns on a GTA they know absolutely nothing about a subject. The worst of these are the packs, which fire off question after question about stuff they should have done at A level. Thus ‘Google it’ quite often comes to mind.

The Aggressive/Argumentative:

“I DON’T UNDERSTAND THIS”. Students like this are the worst. I admit I met one yesterday and frankly felt I wasn’t paid enough to deal with it, so I didn’t. This is an immediate no brainer for a GTA. Raised voice, implying the GTA knows nothing or arguing pointedly with us will send GTAs running. Good luck with this tactic.

So please if you recognise yourself or anyone else, please stop. Even GTAs have a limit.