Thursday, September 16, 2010

I am: A Teaching Assistant

This new addition to my personal biography is hilarious. I am TAing an American History class. I never took American History in high school, and I took one course in University. God love the competence of McGill University. What a leap of faith they're making.

My responsibilities include marking weekly reading summaries (which means I have to do the reading? Aw shit...), marking exams and essays, and heading up 2 tutorials (or conferences, as they are so loftily referred to at McGill) once a week. I am responsible for teaching a class, essentially. This is utter madness. Madness, compounded by the fact that I received the position late, so attended my first class on Monday, therefore missing two weeks of material and my first week's worth of tutorials. My fellow TAs took my missed tutorials for me, and handed me the stack of reading responses I was responsible for grading on Sunday. I didn't even receive the course readings until Monday. One of my students wrote "women were clearly inferior and thus wanted the vote." Check?

I have my first tutorial today. I did the readings for the class this morning.

My brother suggested I bring beer.

I am considering it...

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