The view from my bench

It certainly has been a day.

This is the first day in a long time I’ve actually been busy all day. I guess the first day since I left Ask. And the first day in nearly forever that I’ve been busy all day in a constructive, focused way. I’m not sure how I feel after all this orientation, except that I’m a little nervous, a little excited, and very tired. It both went better and worse than I expected. On the one hand, it was nicely informal (despite having to sign in all over the place to make sure you weren’t skipping stuff), which was relieving since I was worried about the nuts-and-bolts of the actual orientation part. On the other hand, it was much less informative and helpful than I was hoping. I think perhaps the information I’m looking for will become obvious tomorrow when we have our department TA orientation. Or at least, that’s what I’m hoping.

Really what I took away from today was a sense of both the enormity and accessability of TAing. It’s mind boggling to think of me in charge of 25 students, leading them in some meaningful way. Yet when I look at it in the light of tutoring 25 students, it doesn’t seem nearly so difficult. Scenes of all my various TAs have flashed before me all day, and it’s comforting to think that very little of the interaction I ever had with them mattered very much. There were certainly classes I had that were saved by the TA reviewing our materials, but also sections which seemed very little more than a waste of time and energy. I do hope to avoid that, but I also realize that an hour a week out of each of these kids’ lives isn’t a make or break session. If we can get by without it being too unenjoyable for either party, I’m going to call it a success.