Do teachers ever get like... stage fright. I just finished a doubt-clearing session and my hands are shaking (excitement! Nervousness!) I didn't do bad or anything, I am just a heap of excited and warm nerves.
Going through the notes of the C course I’m TAing, this man really introduced pointers in lecture 2 slide 7 huh
I drill it into every kid I teach that writing comments in your code helps keep code clear and understandable, and then my internship place has a stricter "no unnecessary comments" style guideline.
Every day I make a fool of myself on this planet.
You can't achieve a lack of self-consciousness and confidence like a university professor who is willing to crack a lame joke in front of a room of 50+ 19-year-olds.
#And the joke fucking lands too; get on their level#university stuff that I just realised#I have a student named Linus in the Bash class I'm TAing#I was thinking about how if I were teaching this course I would NOT have been able to resist it#at some point I'd have to say it#'aha; you share a name with the creator of the Linux systems we're working with. Linus Torvalds#creator of Linux! Free and open source too; because he hated how UNIX was a propriety software.'#And after that I'd have said something stupid#I guarantee it. And I was thinking about the brave profs who could crack the worst jokes to an auditorium of 200 80-y/o freshers#that's confidence and reckless abandon like none other#academia#professors#teaching assistant#computer science#n shut#university#students
Checking midterms. My students have forgotten how to read.
#make use of the Ctrl+C Ctrl+V guys; literally just copy the instructions#but to do that you have to read them first#please for the love of everything read them#they are painstakingly written in a reader-friendly manner but you do not read what am I supposed to mark you on#you're all clever kids but you Cannot. Read.#teaching assistant#computer science#n shit#literally ctr+C ctrl+V you're CS kids#academia#oof
Stopped myself from using the word "albeit" in the feedback section to one of my students so that they don't hate me
I've marked about 14 assignments in the last 24 hours. Here's my conclusion: I am in charge of a bunch of bright kids with 0 reading comprehension
I have a kid named Nil under my (TA jurisdisction? What powers do I wield), and I can only imagine the havoc this poor kid will unleash on the school's automated systems
I was going through our prof's course notes for the course I'm TAing to see what's going on there, and this man is getting the kids to breed moles on the terminal using regex
#text moles but moles nonetheless#I realise this sounds mental out of context#tbh there's very little I can explain. I am as out of it as anyone else I just TA this#computer science#the perks of being a TA#I don't have to breed ASCII moles#academia#university#teaching assistant#regex sucks fyi I hate it
You know, the fun thing about peeking behind people’s running code is that you see how they went about thinking about things.
#i.e. running round and round in circles#Today I found:#if (condition) { A} else {A}#what am I supposed to even do#part of me tut-tuts that that's four wasteful lines of code#but they're also not 5 so I can't write a comment on every line in a 100-line code like?#The inclination here is I might not be cut out for this teaching business#I love my students but they're cholesterol sometimes#C Programming#coding#teaching assistant#academia#the student saga continues
You know how there’s stuff that comes up every once in a while in a textbook that says, “whatever you do, don’t do this!” and you think to yourself, “why would anyone do that, seems fairly intuitive”? Well, if you’ve thought that, you’ve clearly never taught students.
#the student saga continues#what did they do this time?#redefined a hash define#all of a sudden it makes sense why people would write their constants in caps#I never thought I'd realise that through example but here we are#C programming#teaching assistant#C is hard#programming#programming is hard#university#students#academia#why#studying#correcting assignments is :(
Update to the arrays saga: I read a piece of code written by my incredibly talented students and I have now reliably forgotten how arrays work.
#It's the dumbest thing ever#I'm looking at one student's code now to correct another student's code#this is bad isn't it#My brain = swirlie ice cream except it's disgusting#oh man now I want a swirlie... anything that's not reading more of this code#I cannot with my students#There's an urban saying about C programming:#If you survive it once get the hell outta there do not look back do not pass go keep running and definitely don't teach it!#I mean I made that up but there's a reason why it's an urban saying#C programming#Computer science#Computer science is hard#arrays are hard#students#academia#wtf#university#teaching assistant
I actually just realised how much I enjoy being a teaching assistant, I mean I like knowing shit, and I like talking about shit I know and I like explaining it to people. It’s perfect being a TA. I just get to sit there and dole out sagely advice and warnings about dangling pointers and shit, and I don’t have to use pointers myself which Is great!
Correcting 25 assignments though...
(The kids look at you like you’re a wizard, so I guess it balances out)