Oh good. As my next post indicates, I've been feeling conflicted about my own response. So I was worried that you had been enlightened as to the fact that I'm a big entitled meanie.
I think "thoughtlessly" is the key word. I don't know what it's like for university TAs so much, but I do know that most of my students 1) think I get more money than I do for my teaching, 2) think I get some compensation for prep time, 3) don't realise that I've pretty much had to build my course from scratch. They complain that there's no textbook, which is valid, but don't realise that this is because a textbook doesn't really exist for Intro to Editing in Canada. I need to write one, or compile it, and in order to do that, I need a chunk of time that I don't have.
As far as they're concerned, I'm providing them a service, for which they have paid, and they're just asking for what they need in order to complete the course. As far as I'm concerned they're asking me to do stuff for which I will not be compensated.
Generally, I really, really enjoy teaching. Tuesday's class, while a bit scattered, was fun. I mean, I talked about books and editing with people who are interested in those things, for three hours! It's fun to help people pull together things they already know, and apply those things to a new context, and it's fun to show them tricks and expose them to ideas that are entirely new to them. Most students appreciate the time I spend, both in class and out. And some of them are really smart, funny, and interesting, and bring their own interesting experiences to the class. And that's really cool.
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Date: 2009-06-18 03:38 pm (UTC)Oh good. As my next post indicates, I've been feeling conflicted about my own response. So I was worried that you had been enlightened as to the fact that I'm a big entitled meanie.
I think "thoughtlessly" is the key word. I don't know what it's like for university TAs so much, but I do know that most of my students 1) think I get more money than I do for my teaching, 2) think I get some compensation for prep time, 3) don't realise that I've pretty much had to build my course from scratch. They complain that there's no textbook, which is valid, but don't realise that this is because a textbook doesn't really exist for Intro to Editing in Canada. I need to write one, or compile it, and in order to do that, I need a chunk of time that I don't have.
As far as they're concerned, I'm providing them a service, for which they have paid, and they're just asking for what they need in order to complete the course. As far as I'm concerned they're asking me to do stuff for which I will not be compensated.
Generally, I really, really enjoy teaching. Tuesday's class, while a bit scattered, was fun. I mean, I talked about books and editing with people who are interested in those things, for three hours! It's fun to help people pull together things they already know, and apply those things to a new context, and it's fun to show them tricks and expose them to ideas that are entirely new to them. Most students appreciate the time I spend, both in class and out. And some of them are really smart, funny, and interesting, and bring their own interesting experiences to the class. And that's really cool.