Graduate Assistants

Nifty-summer-teaching-job has completed, at least for the time being, and the course evaluations are beginning to roll in again. Just like last time, most of them are really positive. However, there are a very few that really piss me off to my very core. One of the high school students (or possibly a parent) rated me as a "below average" teacher but failed to follow it up with a comment as to what, exactly, they felt was substandard. Not that a comment explaining their opinion would have made me feel any better. It most certainly would not have to be sure. It's just that ... Read Full Story

It's amazing to me how someone that I considered a close friend would stab me right in the back over an assistantship assignment. My friend, Andi, went behind my back to the department chair and attempted to get my summer TA assignment. Andi is not eligible for an assignment because she's only a masters student but was told that, if there were any available after all of the doctoral students accepted, she would be contacted. Apparently, when she didn't receive an assignment, she decided to lie, cheat and steal to get one. Because Andi is my friend (or so I thought), she knows all ... Read Full Story

This is an email I received from one of Whisper's students regarding her paper grade, which was a "D." Hers was one of the worst of the lot (they were all mostly pretty atrocious, but hers was particularly bad). Jericha: In reference to my paper grade, I went ahead and read all of your suggestions and I will definitely correct and modify so that my final paper is better. Although I understand your suggestions I don’t see how could my grade be a C average. I feel as if I did a lot of work and I strongly feel that my grade should be ... Read Full Story

It must suck to be Whisper right about now. His prize undergrad, the one he sort of gave me the boot in favor of, has already started screwing things up. Tee hee hee. This makes me smile because it seems like poetic justice for the last year of pure psychological torture that I've endured at Whisper's hands. I think I finally figured out what Whisper's cryptic email was attempting to accomplish. He was suggesting that he would be doing me a favor by keeping me on board as his Number Two "go to" person (the prize undergrad was replacing me as Number One). I'm ... Read Full Story

I met with a couple more of Whisper's students today. They both had fixed up their papers and I was so impressed with the effort they put in to elevating the quality of their work. On top of it they were both really appreciative of my willingness to meet with them. That made me feel so crappy. They were devastated by their horrible paper grades and, apparently never saw it coming. This seems to be the theme across the students. However, these two students were so nice about it. They seemed to understand why their grades were so awful and just truly wanted to ... Read Full Story