This semester I am a teacher's assistant for a graduate level biology class. Educating a group of chronically inquisitive students who are always clamoring for your help with this and for an explanation of that is no small task. If you appear too approachable, you will be overrun. Encourage them, and they will think they are entitled to yourevery
waking
moment.
Maintaining a strong psychological grip over your students is paramount to ensuring your independence from their greedy, nagging little carcasses. To anyone who finds his or herself in authority over such a group of students, I have one word of advice: Make them fear you. If any of your students so much as looks at you without feeling a pit in his or her stomach, then you haven't done your job. No one would dare approach the T.A. from hell.
Here's a real life example from my latest T.A. session to illustrate. The context is that the carcasses, I mean... students, are working on their assignment. Half an hour has passed and my co-T.A. still hasn't shown up.
TAFH: I wonder where [the other T.A.] is? He will pay for his misdeed. If any of you knows of a good way to exact revenge, I'd be happy to know it.
CARCASS 1: Why don't you make him come to the next two T.A. sessions by himself? That would teach him.
TAFH: Well, yes. I could do that. But I had something more dramatic in mind...
CARCASS 2: Like what?
TAFH: I was thinking more along the lines of... murder.
CARCASS 1 & 2: ...
Worked like a charm. No one asked me a question for the entire remainder of the class.
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7 comments:
I'm choking even believing such words passed your lips - or that you kept a straight face while doing so - or that even as boneheaded a class as you describe your class didn't erupt into uproarious mirth at the very thought.
You're about as scary as sliced white bread. The students were probably quiet because they were all busy wondering to themselves how it is you went moldy so quickly...
As scary as sliced white bread you say? Even something as seemingly innocent as sliced white bread can become an instrument of death. All one need do is amend the recipe to include a box of razorblades or some other less digestible material. How easily the slice-ed becomes the slice-er.
PK: why are you pale?
It's hard to get a tan when you risk bursting into flames at the sun's touch - but actually it's a Tolkein reference, something Frodo says after facing the Ringwraiths at Weathertop - Where is the pale king?
You weren't wearing your 'WWF Smackdown: Mr. Snufflupugus Versus the Cookie Monster' T-shirt when you made the death threat, were you? It's possible the irony was what held them speechless.
I never knew that you could be such a sadist, albeit by feigning. I see all those years of abuse by yours truly has finally paid off.
At last, you're learning to become a real man...
brad: don't give yourself so much credit. All your antics ever did for me was to make me afraid to leave the safety of my bed every morning.
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