I was an undergrad TA for a semester as well. I think most of my criticisms are more applicable during early childhood development. Students get into their own

I was an undergrad TA for a semester as well. I think most of my criticisms are more applicable during early childhood development. Students get into their own self-fulfilling prophecies about what they can do and by college are quite good at sabotaging themselves. That said, I should have reasoned about pointers by simply handing them a map to a building and saying "this tells you how to get to the building. It's a pointer. The building actually has what you want. This cannot because it is paper." Perhaps framing that "ceci n'est pas une pipe" picture on the class wall would help, too.