Month: December 2003

OTHER SIDE OF THE COIN

Tomorrow, I will walk into an exam room and be bored out of my mind for two and a half hours. Yes, that’s right, I’m going to invigilate a second year mechanical engineering final exam. The course is Rigid Body Dynamics and I took it myself many, many moons ago. I really enjoyed the material. You get to draw a lot of diagrams and by the end, you do things like predict trajectories of flying objects (ie. missiles) or model the behaviour of impacts between rigid bodies (ie. a puck off the boards or glass).

Anyways, since the day I knew I was going to be a TA, I was looking forward to this. Ya see, for five straight years in undergrad, whenever I walked into a final examination room, I was the one doing the sweating. There would always be the TAs who made sure you weren’t cheating and who checked your ID. They looked bored out of their mind for most of the time. You couldn’t even ask them questions, because they usually weren’t the TAs for the course. I’d always think, “Man, I wonder what it’s like being in their shoes instead of sitting and squirming for hours on end?”

So now, I’m a TA and tomorrow I’ll get to see what it’s like. Am I still looking forward to it? To be honest… no. The damn exam is at 8:30am in the morning and I have to be there at 8am. I have my own AI exam to write the day after so I’ll be totally screwed up because of the early time. I go to bed usually around 4am now, so this is gonna throw a big wrench in the works.

I’ll probably be so out of it during the exam that people could cheat right in front of me and I wouldn’t notice. And seriously, how boring is it to watch people be nervous for two and a half hours? The space-time continuum must warp during exams because to the students, those hours will just fly by.

Invigilating an exam is something I probably will appreciate doing afterwards, but dude, 8am is early!

IT WAS A PLEASURE

Most of you know I was a TA for the first time this term. I’ve tutored high school students one-on-one before but this was the highest level of education I’ve been involved in as an instructor. This was also the largest number of students I’ve had at one time as well, totaling over 40 students in my tutorial.

I met with them four hours a week for the last three months. Over that time, I think everybody got to know me quite well. Sometimes you don’t even remember your TA’s name, I think every one of my students knew my name.

They had their last tutorial last Wednesday. I had to give them a quiz, which probably wasn’t the best way to end things, but I think they all did alright.

As they handed in their papers, some of my students were thoughtful enough to make some comments to me. Several of them thanked me for being their TA and shook my hand. I really appreciated this. A few even wished me good luck with my degree. It’s nice to know they remembered that I’m a student too.

One guy even said that out of all his TAs, I was the best in the bunch. I asked him how many TAs he had and he said three. This made me feel good. As engineering students, they’ll see a million TAs in their academic career and I hope for at least him, I’ll have set some standard.

One young lady said that I was “awesome” and I should teach. I thanked her for her comments. A lot of people have said I’d make a good instructor, but I don’t see myself teaching elementary or high school students. The only other option is post-secondary, and they usually don’t let you teach at that level without a doctorate. Unfortunately, I don’t really see myself doing a PhD.

At the end, I felt a sense of responsibility for these students. I hope that even in the littlest sense I was able to impart some wisdom, some indication of what you need to do to survive as an engineering student.

Most TAs are evaluated by a form that each students fills out. I will not be getting such feedback. The course I TA’d is unique in the sense there are several instructors and the standard forms don’t fit the mold. It’s really too bad since I’d like to improve on what I did this term.

Before I gave the quiz out, I told my students it was a pleasure having them this term and I wished them good luck with the rest of their career at UBC. I’ll probably won’t TA any of them ever again.

About an hour after the quiz was handed out, they had all left. I was a bit sad to see them go, but next term I’ll have a whole new set of students to meet.

DAY LATE, DOLLAR SHORT

It’s nearly five am. I shoudn’t be up and it’s probably not a good idea to be blogging now either. Oh well. This is what happens during final exam time.

I’m a day behind my study schedule for my AI final exam on Thursday. I did not do a lick of studying on Saturday. Instead, in the afternoon, I wound up somewhere downtown, food shopping, and sniffing Rhonda’s bread on the Aquabus. I got back at 5pm and a sane person would have ordered in and started studying for the night. Instead, I somehow wound up at Earl’s for dinner. Yep, it was good company and food all around. The meal was smooth as Merino wool. So a sane person would have started studying at 9pm when I got back, but instead I played Trivial Pursuit till midnight. And there my friends was my day.

I sorta live by this rule these days. If I have two competing options with what to do during the day, I use the rule: Ten years from now, which option would I remember more? Just about about everything is more memorable than studying, thus my choice on Saturday. I didn’t have this rule in undergrad, and it probably accounts for my unrealistically high (given my mental capacity) undergrad GPA.

I tried my best to kick some ass today, but I’m not sure if I made up a day. I’ll probably have to go hard again tomorrow. You know, I was at this stage of studying yesterday, I’d be in great shape. What’s done is done though and you can’t change the past.

What? No, I can’t. I haven’t even warmed up! Alright, alright, I’ll sing you a song.

Good night folks!