> At this point a lot of them would look at me like I was insane, and reply with some variant of "I can't do it" or "we were never taught how to do that" and wa

> At this point a lot of them would look at me like I was insane, and reply with some variant of "I can't do it" or "we were never taught how to do that" and want to reach for the computer, whereupon I would stop them and show how. I wish I would have had such a TA in my university. Instead, I got compressed deadlines and a "you figure it out or you fail" mentality in the majority of my classes. There were lectures and a textbook - if you couldn't sort it out and make it click on your own, alongside all of your other courses, you were SOL.