There should be a hug your TA day

I am currently TAing as I write this. I am a Graduate TA for a program outside of my program (I am purposely being vague). The program is actually off-campus so I am the TA for the on campus section as they receive the satellite feed from the off campus location. Picture a window-less room with a big projector screen and a lot of unmotivated 4th year grad students ready to be anywhere but there. My job is microphone/fed ex girl. I bring the mic to students when the off campus professor begs them to talk. Here’s how it goes…professor says, “how about someone in Columbia answer this question…” and I pick up the mic and begin strolling down the rows waiting and searching for someone to answer. Sometimes this takes 5 whole minutes… I stroll…they all sit in silence avoiding eye contact, and then finally after a very long awkward silence, someone will have mercy and say very bored, “I’ll answer.” And my heart leaps for joy as I run the mic over to them and tell myself, “see you are so needed.” And then after class I put all of their assignments in a fed ex envelope and mail it.

We have the class in a room where I guess the janitors decided to be cranky and make it a rule that we can’t have any food or drink in the classroom. There are signs everywhere that read: “No food, drinks, or smoking.” Now I know this is the Midwest and just about everyone smokes, but I think everyone could pretty much assume that they probably shouldn’t smoke in class. But I guess that’s the other part of my job to make sure they don’t light up.

All in all it’s a good job and pretty low stress. Although there are some days when we have technical difficulties like the mic doesn’t work so there I am screaming up at the front of the class, “Dr. ___ can you hear me… can you hear me now… how about now?!”

And all 23 pairs of eyes just continue to stare at me.