4 ms·

Thanks for your thoughts! Perhaps I am a bit jaded as I went to a large university and I don't think a single professor could recognize me as a student, even th

• filoleg 7y ago
  >I went to a large university and I don't think a single professor could recognize me as a student I was in the same situation, and that's where the TAs (Teaching Assistants) stepped in. And most of the time, it made all the difference. Professors for a lot of classes (but not all of them) were just glorified lecture material recital machines, however, the value of TA office hours was insurmountable. The difference between classes that had great TAs vs. classes that had bad TAs was extremely noticeable in terms of the amount of material I learned. I agree with the rest of the sentiment in the thread though. I didn't need professors or TAs 80%+ of my time, but whenever I got stuck, a good explanation or hint from TA made all the difference. You could easily tell by looking at everyone's scores and knowledge who went to TA office hours and who didn't. Ironically enough, the scores didn't seem to correlate almost at all with lecture attendance. This inspired me to become a TA myself later on, and I am very glad I did that. It felt really rewarding to be able to figure out that one extra little nudge of information that, if given to a student in struggle, made it click in their heads.