Blogcoven

Although I’ve used up the Starbucks card I received as a thank-you gift from one of my students at the end of my frosh chem teaching experience, the warm glow of happiness remained. It burned like an ember in the crushing darkness of doubt, resisting the crashing tides of criticism that drive any self-respecting postgrad in the sciences.

Then I got the e-mail saying “TA reviews from last year are online now.” So, like an idiot, I went and checked them. I didn’t twig until I’d gotten to the reviews of the head TA (universally poor) that they were comments on the 2005-6 academic year. Rather than leaving well enough alone, I scrolled down to see what my comments were like.

They were terrible. In most cases, they were also completely fair.

When I say the comments were horrific, that they strike the ego with all the force of the Slayer impaling a raging vampire, that they wither the soul into a whimpering puddle of sadness and self-doubt, I am engaging in a form of traditional British understatement. No really. These are bad comments. It turns out I was right when I told people the students hated me as much as I hated them. My first term teaching was an unmitigated disaster.

All of the comments were negative, but one student was so moved by my lack of teaching ability that (s)he composed a lengthy and detailed essay explaining what I’d done wrong. This oeuvre ended with a recommendation that I “reconsider [my] position as TA.”

Lovely.

Things got better the second and third terms I taught, with far less hatred on both sides of the desk. I have mentioned before that I apparently come across as “bitter,” though this didn’t seem to bother my Winter term students. One new and particularly insightful commenter noted that I “sometimes became confused at the board during section,” which is a fair observation though still misses the possibility that I might have paused during an explanation or restated concepts because I wanted to make sure I had said things clearly. I cling to those positive or at least constructively critical comments, though the negative ones ring the most true.

One item in the evaluation remains a mystery, however. Each TA is rated on their “proficiency with English” from “quite poor” to “fluent.” At least one student gave me a 5 out of 7. I’m not sure what to make of this, and am curious to know what that student thought I was fluent in.