out back, out front

the joys of TA TA TA

I am incredibly struck by the casual nature of being a teaching assistant / been a graduate student. Whether or not it's my work ethic shining through or what, I have no idea, but I can definitely sense and see that I am not as similar to the next person as I thought. Yes, I am just as anxious as them, if not moreso, and I'm not arguably more intelligent, but I have a feeling my work ethic may just be a bit more firm than several... hundred... other teaching assistants.

TA Orientation was quite fine overall. It was wildly informative on many levels though nothing specially deep to be honest. It was just good to see what was going on from an actual TA perspective. I will have to see how things go next week during class with the other TAs for my section with my professor. So time will tell, is the story.

• woke up at 7:15 after three hours of sleep
• did not take shower, did get anxious-sick
• wrote long post for guild on guild forum
• got moving, got a call
• parked in confusing parking garage
• wandered around totally disoriented
• forced person on phone to look up information
• found the place I needed to go just as person on phone found information
• filled out registration paper outside room
• went inside, parked my butt way in the back of the room
• realized quickly that they lied to us about the start time of 8:30, it really begins at 9
• texted person about how many many many people were coming in
• the room filled up entirely, they made a new room for overflow
• educated white men gave us introductory speeches
• split up to get coffee & tiny muffins before breakout sessions
• first session sat alone, syllabus creation and first weeks
• got secret info from graduate student who happened to be in my field
• ran into another one of my classmates, bonded with two more
• went to second breakout session about undergraduate teaching styles with the classmate (who we'll call strawberry)
• had the same asshole from the very first room who was aggravating the woman next to him end up magically sitting next to me
• he had a comment for every little thing and I wanted to ask how insecure he was about his masculinity and control over the situation
• this second breakout session was fun - worst and best teaching examples
• the two graduate students were casual, fun, worked awesomely together!
• strawberry and I went to our third session, mandatory for our sort of TAs (grader/office hours TAs)
• ran into the rest of the history TAs for our class
• we all sat vertically from each other in room, surprised entire group when asked if there were history peeps
• I start to seriously fall asleep at the end of this
• am totally delirious, nodding off, omg omg
• finally get to leave, ask about next orientation tomorrow, get my ass out of there
• pay 8 dollar parking ticket
• go home, change clothing, get chicken sandwich
• pass. the. hell. out.
• comrade comes home, talk to comrade
• comrade goes up to sleep
• surf web
• write this blog