Thoughts on The First Year

Permit me to take a quick study break to share my thoughts on my first year of actually teaching, and the few discoveries I have made about it.

Its weird to be a GTA, especially for professors that I respect. On one hand I understand their methods, and I accept that they're wiser than you are in what actually works with students, and on the other hand I also want to try out what I think is right (which of course inevitably led to failure, but this is how we learn).

This is what I learned in Fall.
Internet homework, especially when it is written by an outside company and has little to do with what the Professor actually tests on, is ridiculous. I got panned for not helping them with their Internet homework (despite the fact they had the dang solutions available to them along with very detailed explanations - why should I waste valuable class time with that?), despite the fact that my students got some of the best grades on the tests. Professors who use Internet homework applications to "ease the load" actually hurt their GTAs by creating a moral hazard problem. If the computer explains it to them, why should we? Don't outsource a valuable part of your lesson plan.

Students, for the most part, don't care. They are subsidized by the heard earned tax dollars of our lovely Midwestern state, and they just don't care. Meanwhile I'm getting paid to sit in my office hours while they don't show up. Even when I stare them in the face and say: "Your test was awful. You need to come in and see me during my office hours." In fact they make appointments that they never show up to.

Students do care, so don't stop caring about them. Yes its frustrating. Yes they never show up to office hours. But there are usually one or two in the 50+ batch that honestly want to learn. Have patience with them, explain the same thing fifty times over if you have to, and when they get an A on the final while all their other classmates bomb pathetically, be a little proud of your own contribution.

Expect bad reviews. You'll get them no matter how much you try or don't try. Try to wade through the mess and find the ones that you can use to improve yourself. Out of fifteen handwritten "bad" comments, I found two that I felt were actually important. I wrote them out, and spent some time thinking about them, and what I can do to make the next semester better. And that moves me on to..

Spring semester.
Same old song, but with a different beat.

Use examples. The Laws of Supply and Demand, no matter how crystal clear to me, are not immediately understandable to everyone else. Choose GOOD examples that clearly illustrate concepts. Leave the counterexamples and "sorta-kinda" examples for the students to ask about. It'll lead to interesting class discussion if some one brings them up. Economic theory for its own sake (no matter how much I love it), is not appreciated by the general public.

Students are funny if you let them be. There's a lot going on in those dead stares that they give me while I'm going over utility. Given half the chance though, they'll come up with very good examples of abstract concepts which can snap a few of their sleepy comrades back to the present. The utility forms of prostitution and chocolate anyone?

Students say weird things. I had one student ask me if the US government had any economic reason to conspire the events of September 11th. "You mean attack their own country, attempting to cripple the banking system that keeps our economy going, and thus our nation in stability?" "Yeah." "No." This wasn't out of the blue. I was talking about the Federal Reserve System's flexibility and used a passage in Alan Greenspan's memoirs to point to how well it works. When the NY Fed closed down, the other Feds were able to keep running and keep cash flowing in the economy, averting bank runs and economic crisis. So yeah. That was an... interesting question to field.

Write your own homework assignments. You know what they're covering, you know where to find the examples in the notes. At first I was annoyed that my professor told me to write the homework. Now I look forward to it.

It's okay to be political. First semester I avoided making policy judgments or subjective statements like the plague. But economics is a subjective field. I brought up my concerns about corn ethanol, I talked about presidential candidates, and I discussed the pros and cons of monetary policy enacted by good ol' Benny, and guess what? The world did not end. I did not silence any students, I did not belittle anyone for having a different opinion, and I tried my best to get students with dissenting opinions to discuss them further (granted getting them to talk about economics is like pulling teeth anyway). I didn't convince most of them of my corn crusade I'm sure. But I forced them to think about it. And I'm happy about that.

Multiple choice questions don't tell you anything. As easy as they are to grade, and as much as students love them, this is not a multiple choice world. Some of my best scorers on the midterms, quizzes, and multiple choice homework sections showed woeful ineptitude on the short answer sections. This leads me to believe that they're good at picking from four which is the most likely answer (and it really is pretty easy), and not that they understand how to apply even the most basic theory. On top of that, once they hit the labor market, their lives will not be multiple choice. We're cheating them a little by this, and just so that we can grade things a little easier.

Defer to the professor's method. I am the TA, he is the professor. My professor has been very patient with me, and never outright told me that something was a dumb idea. At the beginning he would very politely suggest, "Shouldn't it be done this way instead?" At first I had to try my own way, and it usually didn't work. Since February though, whenever I get an e-mail or call that begins with, "Well that is a good idea, but shouldn't .... be done this way instead?" I read it very carefully, think about it, then do whatever we suggests. I haven't gone wrong with that yet.

Students lie. The beginning of the semester saw me wanting to be a nice understanding guy... by mid semester I was demanding documentation for everything (from military service to funerals), and finding the students' most common argument were the magic words, "But its not MY fault!" only made me automatically shut down their request.

Students will try to manipulate you by crying or yelling. One of my TAs bounced a student over to me to deal with*. The student felt she should be excused from the pop quiz she missed because her professor kept her late. This particular quiz was given almost twenty minutes after lecture started, and we ended up giving them fifteen minutes (we usually give ten) so they could finish it. So I told her no. What followed was three minutes of her yelling (and I mean yelling) "it's not my fault" and "this isn't fair" to anything I said (in front of thirty other students, two TAs, and the professor), and looming crocodile-tears. It only stopped when I told her I'd excuse her from the quiz if I got her professors name, e-mail, and a signed statement saying he had kept her late. The student has avoided me for the rest of the semester, and I still have not even gotten the professor's name. My professor's response? A cryptic smile, and a chuckle after she walked away.

*A note on one of my TA's bouncing a student over to me. This only happens when the student is overly aggressive with the TA. Its department policy. If the TA feels threatened (physically or otherwise) by the student, they are to send them to the Head TA. If the Head TA cannot resolve the situation or feels threatened themselves, they bounce it to the prof. So getting an antagonistic student from another TA is part of my job. I am constantly disgusted at the fact that there are certain students who will use their build to subtly threaten their TAs. There are also attempts to shame the TA in public and emotional manipulation, like my little student above. They're less disturbing than the former case, but still annoying.