The worst thing about being a mathematics graduate student--apart, of course, for the immense pressure of qualifying exams, which consume years of useful mathematical time that could be spent, as it is in physics, joining a research group and working towards publication--is the grading. TAdom is how we earn our keep; it is an inevitable fact of life, like death and taxes, and talk radio. In addition to draining away our sorely-needed time and energy, grading also saps our hope. Students very rarely do well on exams. At least that has been my experience here. After a while, one begins to take a sadistic delight in splattering red, red ink across their helpless, virginal papers...
Every now and again, though, one gets a pleasant surprise. Mostly, these pleasant surprises are pictures.
Perhaps this is less common outside of maths...
Most students in the sort of courses we get to TA are not math people. Most likely they don't enjoy math in the least, and are only taking the class because it's required. Math does not come intuitively to them. Sometimes, they just give up. And sometimes when they do, they flaunt their other talents, as if to convince me that they're not total failures. I love it when students, in lieu of a solution, draw me pictures. I had a very good weeping puppy once...Many, many tearful cartoon faces...Just today, I had a rather fine one, a sketch of a squatty-headed and thuggish young man saying 'Sorry, I'm not good at math!'
I wanted to give him points for that.
But I could not.
Life is cruel.
Another highlight can be the student evaluation forms, after each term ends. Occasionally, their written comments can delight. Spring quarter, in response to a question about what detracted most from their learning in the class, one person wrote 'SARS,' and another 'Ugly girls.' There was also 'I don't like the kid with the curly hair or the one with the big teeth.' And, dear to my heart, someone even used the phrase 'Unless I'm smoking crack' in their comments.
Posted by aloysius at August 22, 2003 09:28 PM | TrackBack |