the air

Many colleges across the United States offer courses that have teaching assistants in addition to the professors. These teaching assistants (TA) supplement the instruction and lectures provided by the professor. Some courses have multiple TA’s while others only have one TA. However, what students do not realize is that most of these TA’s can be lifesavers and can genuinely help you succeed. However, did you know that these TA’s can also influence your overall grade? Prepare yourself for some confessions of a teaching assistant.

TA’s do NOT teach, they supplement

I can’t tell you how many times students have approached me and asked for help. Generally, that’s a good thing because it ensures that I maintain a good rapport with the students as well as pinpoint weaknesses in the professor’s lectures. However, as a TA, it is NOT my job to teach you the material. Rather, it is my job to help you understand the professor’s lecture better and help you learn the material. This does not mean that I have to sit down with you halfway through the semester and teach you everything from scratch. As a TA, I’m also a student who has his own work to deal with. How can you expect me to spare more time than my office hours to help you? Put it this way, would you be willing to spare a few hours explaining the material to a total stranger on a weekly or daily basis? Probably not.

We can make exceptions to the syllabus

Most professors want you to think that the information in the syllabus is set in stone. However, that is not always the case. If your course has a strict no-late assignment policy, you may be out of luck with the professor. However, go talk to your TA and explain why he/she should make an exception in your case. Quite a few times, TA’s make exceptions for accepting late homework due to a student’s extenuating circumstances. These may include, but certainly not limited to:

• the student was sick (be prepared to show doctor’s note
• the TA and/or professor were unable to answer pertinent questions about the assignment when it was assigned
• the student is borderline and the late assignment can boost them over

We cannot simply change your grade, but we can talk to the professor and present your case on your behalf. The professors are probably not willing to listen to you, but any professor will almost always listen to their TA(s).

We do NOT assign grades

I don’t know why, but it seems like almost every student thinks that TA’s can assign grades. First, you have to remember that grades are earned. You earn your grade, and I cannot simply give you an A for trying while you fail all your exams. However, I can help you learn the material. I can help you prepare for the exams if you are willing to come prepared to our meetings. If you show effort, you will succeed and the TA’s can take that into account if your are border-line. How? If you are border-line, we can recommend that you earn a few participation points or even ask that an assignment or exam be regraded. Often, I notice that a few extra points are merited after a regrade.

Do NOT make me angry

If a TA is incapable of helping you, or is unwilling, or doesn’t know the material, do not be tempted to mouth-off to them. You may think that we may not have much say in your grade, but we have significant say with the professor. To put it frankly, I can grade your assignments extra hard and be extremely strict with the grading. I could also go and tell the professor to do the same. Even if you ask for a regrade, I can simply say agree to regrade it and come back the next day and say, “everything seems fine to me. I’m not awarding any extra points.” The best part is that you’ll have a very tough time proving to the authorities that I am being unjust since the burden of proof is on you. The moral is: be nice to your TA’s and they will be nice to you.

Here’s how we can get in trouble

Believe it or not, we can get into a lot of trouble if we don’t do our jobs correctly. Obviously, we cannot fraternize with students. That means, we cannot accept gifts, go to parties with you, we cannot go out on dates, and we cannot have any sexual relationships with our students. However, we also have to uphold very high ethical standards. If students are cheating and we fail to catch them, we can lose our jobs. If we have scheduled office hours and we are consistently late or not present, we can and most likely will lose our jobs. If we help students cheat, we will lose our jobs. But here’s how things get really bad for us. If we lose our jobs, chances are we could be recommended for further disciplinary actions by the dean of the college or even the Dean of Students. So it is YOUR responsibility that we are doing our job ethically and professionally. Hell, you’re paying to learn, so you might as well ensure that you are receiving the best bang for your buck.

I was a teaching assistant for the fall 2006 semester at Northern Illinois University. This post is not designed to be an exhaustive take on teaching assistants, but generally, these issues are common amongst all teaching assistants at most colleges. If you have any observations to add, please do so in the comments.

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Earlier today, I checked my grades and I am simply stunned. For the first time in my life, I have earned straight A’s. This translates into a semester GPA of 4.0 and an overall GPA of 3.85; otherwise known as a perfect semester.

Here’s a breakdown by course:

• MEE210 (Statics): A
• ISYE495 (Senior Design): A
• ISYE 480 (Simulation & Modeling): A
• ARTH282 (Introduction to Art History): A
• FLCL271 (Ancient Greek Mythology): A

How was your semester? Don’t panic if you did not do as well as you wanted to. After many years of studying my habits and tweaking them, I have finally found a great formula for success that works for me. Will it work for you? It may or may not, but the only way to find out is to actually try it. Unlike what other people might encourage you to try, my approach is simple and focuses on immediate results. Stay tuned for a post that will teach you more.

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Now that colleges across the country are resuming, have you done the following?

• Talk to your professors one-on-one
• Read and studied your course syllabi

Know your instructor

Most students make the mistake of not taking the time to get to know their professors early on in the semester. In fact, many students only approach the professor before/after an exam or towards the end of the semester. The worst part is that an abnormal amount of students go to the professor to “beg” for a better grade without even taking the time to get to know the person. At this early point in the semester, if you go to meet the professor, he/she will be far more accommodating and be pleased to know that you are genuinely interested in them. Why? Right now, you have no quiz/exams to worry about and you’ll be demonstrating initiative.

So what do I talk about?

When you visit your professor this early in the semester, try to ask them about the course or what the best way to study for the material is. Ask them about things not pertaining to school. You should even approach them for career advice. The point is that you should talk to them about anything you fancy because the objective is for them to know you and be able to greet you on a far more personal level. Who knows, they may even be willing to help you out when you really do need their help.

Where’s that syllabus?

If you have not heard lately, the course syllabus is extremely valuable and you should treat it like a holy book. That piece of paper holds the expectations of your instructor, important dates, assignments, and much much more. It is imperative that you spend some time studying that document and knowing the important parts of it. I tend to focus more on the dates rather than the grading because if I forget the dates or mix them up, I will screw up my grade. Sometimes it is easier to summarize important items on the syllabus on a separate sheet of paper and use that sheet as a quick reference guide. The more familiar you become with your syllabus the far better life will be in that class.

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What defines a good student? What defines a great student? Have you ever taken the time to wonder what the differences and similarities are? Maybe a good question might be, how can there be any significant difference between a great and good student? You would be surprised as to the level of success and happiness enjoyed by good students and great students. Needless to say, there are not many differences between a good and great student, but they are noteworthy.

Differences Abound

• great students help other students
• great students take risks
• great students are pro-active
• great students are willing to fail

Help others

Great students take the time to help other students whenever they can. From my experience, many good students simply shy away from helping others because they do not want to or they do not have time. However, a great student will make time because he/she knows that by helping others, only then can you be assured of mastering a topic. In other words, by helping others, you can prove to yourself how well you know a particular topic or concept. If you struggle explaining, then your grasp of the content is not very good and you may need more time to study it. Besides, it’s always a good idea to lend a helping hand because you never know when you may need their assistance.

Take a chance

How many students do you know are willing to take a chance and try something new? Good students will follow the prescribed course plans laid out, but great students will deviate from that plan. Why? It is important for any student to get the most out of their educational experience, that is why it is essential to try new things. Risks come in many forms and some risks are not worth taking (e.g. cheating). Some risks that I have taken include taking courses that were not required or becoming President of a student organization. Sometimes risks teach students invaluable lessons which can only help them out. Sometimes those risks can inflict emotional pain and cause great suffering. Great students are willing to take a chance and risk it all for the sake of experience and fun.

Go beyond the call of duty

When I mention the term “pro-active” it means that great students go further than what is required. If you have a report to do, make it extraordinary or beyond the instructor’s expectations. For example, my instructor some time ago asked me to write a three page review of a lengthy article. When I was done, I had actually written five pages of review and my own thoughts/opinions backed up by supporting documents. In addition, I had taken the time to document my sources as well as attach a cover page. Overall, this small assignment became a full-fledged formal report which went above and beyond what was required. The end result was that my instructor cherished my work and kept it as a sample of an excellent paper. Make sure you obtain approval of your instructor if you can be creative with the assignment - very few will say no - before attempting to go all out. The best part of doing something like this is that you can learn more and ensure a great grade.

Fail and Succeed

Remember how I talked about taking chances? What if you fail? Is that something you are willing to do? Most likely not. Great students are not only willing to take risks, but also fail. They understand that failing is not exactly failure but another opportunity to succeed. Try not to look at failing as the end but rather, as the beginning of something more. Whenever I fail, I use that as an opportunity to find out what I did wrong and improve. In fact, I’ve said this to many people before and that is: would you rather succeed a thousand times and fail once or fail a thousand times and succeed once? Think about that because once you fail after a thousand successes, you will never understand why you failed. You’ll wonder and wonder and ask yourself, “well I’ve been doing everything by the book before and it worked, why now?” However, if you succeed once after failing a thousand times, you will understand that in order to succeed, you must continually change your approach because the same formula will not always work. Do you agree or disagree?

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Every year at college and in high school, thousands of students engage in the so-called art of BS - otherwise known as bullshit. When someone says they BS’d a paper, do you have any idea what they mean? BSing a paper basically means that you wrote a paper without doing significant research or knowing the material very well. In order to successfully write a BS’d paper, you must also earn an excellent grade as well. Let’s face it, if you cannot earn a good grade on a BS’d paper, you are better off just doing the actual paper in a legitimate manner (i.e., do your research and write it effectively).

Skills Required

BSing requires three skills to be of utmost importance. It is important to remember that BSing preys upon your instructor’s inability to actually read the entire paper. However, a well written BS’d paper will actually make sense and appear to be well thought out. All good BS’d papers will have:

• Excellent grammar
• Excellent vocabulary
• Follow the rules

Write Right

We all learned English and many of us fell asleep whenever our teachers taught us the rules of writing. If you cannot write well, then how can you expect to write a well-written BS’d paper? If you cannot write well, now would be a great time to go out and buy a grammar book. It really doesn’t matter what book you buy as long as it contains grammar rules.

practice your grammar

Do you have a blog? If so, practicing your grammar on your blog is a great way to improve your new grammar skills. Many times, you may not have others crtiquing your work, but you can critique it yourself with a grammar book in tow. So you don’t have a blog? It might be a great time to start one. If you don’t want to, why not start a paper journal or something? In fact, you don’t need to write about your life or something about yourself. Just grab a newspaper article and write a review of the article. Try summarizing the article in your own words and try to explain it to someone else in writing. The goal of this exercise is to have you write using proper grammar, so it really does not matter what you write.

Choose Your Words Wisely

Nothing impresses an instructor than using big and complex words in your paper. This is where a thesaurus comes in handy. If you don’t have one, I highly suggest you buy one. I know the Internet has many free thesauruses, but you should always have one in print. Many times, you need to be able to remember complex words while away from your computer or thesaurus. The next best thing is to buy an SAT vocabulary book and memorize those words. The more you memorize the better off you will be. A sweet advantage of having an SAT vocabulary book is that many of those words can be used in everyday talk.

Follow The Prescribed Instructions

There is nothing worse than being told by an instructor that your paper did not follow the instructions and he/she cannot award you any points or gives you an incomplete. That is why it is extremely important for the good BS’er to follow all instructions carefully. If your instructor says that you must have five quotations in your essay from a particular book, then make sure you have at least five quotations from the said book. I have seen many students who BS a paper and simply fail to follow a simple instruction as “make sure you have a title page.” The end result is that they end up with a lower grade. This last rule is applicable to everyone, even if you are not into BS’ing. So always follow the rules.

BSing is not easy and should not be attempted unless you are willing to risk it all. It is possible that by BSing, you can be outed by your instructor and you could end up with a failing grade. With proper grammar and the correct use of “big” words, anyone has the ability to become a great writer. There is no substitute for writing a well-researched paper, but there are times in a student’s career where one must take shortcuts to get the job done. So good luck with your BS’ing adventures and let me know how it goes for you.

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