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Comment by jseliger | Hacker News Reader

A bit of background: I wrote this because a lot of my students say things like, "You teach AND take classes?" and call me "Dr." or "Professor" when I'm technically not, although many of their other instructors are PhDs and professors. As noted in the essay, such experiences made me realize that I didn't know a lot about universities when I started in one either.

So now I direct people who ask me what this grad student business is to the essay, which has been on my private course sites for a long time but which I've finally decided to make public.

Note: if you have feedback, I'd love to hear it, especially if you're an undergrad (two of my former students read "How Universities Work" and said it made sense; the changes that resulted were relatively minor). If you want to send msgs privately, try seligerj [[at]] gmail --dot-- com.

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Since you asked for feedback...

Your statement that all T.A.s do care a little about teaching is false. I was a T.A. that Did Not Care. There were no consequences to doing poorly, and student grades were controlled across T.A.s so my performance could have no affect on student performance.

Also? Be nice to your T.A. Sometimes I was allowed to wildly inflate grades for students who were enthusiastic/tried hard. Sometimes not. But it can't hurt.

Another random piece of advice I would give is for students to take sections later in the week rather than earlier. My first section was always a disaster, I had no idea what I was doing.

If there is a rubric, follow it to the letter, and don't try to be creative. Rubrics are for larger classes to make the grading even, and they are followed exactly. I knew an A paper from a B paper, but sometimes A papers got Bs and B papers got As because of the stupid rubric (or worse...)

Your statement that all T.A.s do care a little about teaching is false.

From the essay:

To be sure, there are exceptions: some professors will be hostile or uninterested regardless of how much effort a student shows, and some will be martyrs who try to reach even the most distant, disgruntled student. But most professors are in the middle, looking for students who are engaged and focusing on those students.

You teach two classes a semester? Professors in my department don't even have that load. No wonder if takes humanities students so long to graduate. That must be awful - not the teaching itself (I love teaching), but the large, constant teaching burden on top of research.

That's common in state universities. Some TAs at the University of Arizona teach 4 sections. (each once a week)

I hope that they get a handsome reward (in $$) from the university for that.

Just some formatting feedback. I noticed that there were three hard breaks (ie: <br>) in the content, and they didn't seem to belong (possibly an artifact of your wysiwyg editor).

Look for:

  "assuming you want to graduate on time."
  "Go to the professor’s office hours"
  "whether the question he has asked is the right one"

Having recently graduated with a B.S. Degree (pun intended), I really appreciated your article. Even with two parents who did it before me, navigating the college experience in under four years was difficult (mostly because of the hoops you must go through to graduate on time: "ABC 201 is a Prerequisite of ABC 202... but don't plan on taking it in the fall, it's only offered in the spring semester.")

Small correction. At one point, you say, "Graduate Students (like me, as of this writing) have earned a B.A. and are working towards either an M.A. or a Ph.D." Of course, many graduate students have not earned a B.A., but rather, a B.S.

Fixed: "have earned a B.A. or equivalent." I the mention B.S. earlier, too: "Congratulations: you’re now probably working toward your B.A. (bachelor of arts) or B.S. (bachelor of science), which will probably take four years."

Thanks for the heads up.

You do know that some places award MA degrees in four years as first degrees?

Despite temptation, a beginner's introduction to a topic is not the place to list every permutation of the basic concepts that somebody, somewhere uses, but rather to simply explain the basic concepts. Trying to do both at once results in the student knowing less at the end than when they started; not only do they still not understand, now they're afraid of the topic!

I'm so glad you pointed this out. I was getting extremely confused by the bias of the author toward Bachelors of Arts degrees over Bachelors of Science degrees. In fact some degrees were not mentioned at all in the article such as S.B. degrees. I was worried about the validity of his arguments and advice because of the lack of rigor in his research of what degrees undergraduates can earn. Again I applaud your efforts to clean up his act.

I was worried about the validity of his arguments and advice because of the lack of rigor in his research of what degrees undergraduates can earn.

See this comment: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1730253 :

Despite temptation, a beginner's introduction to a topic is not the place to list every permutation of the basic concepts that somebody, somewhere uses, but rather to simply explain the basic concepts. Trying to do both at once results in the student knowing less at the end than when they started; not only do they still not understand, now they're afraid of the topic!

In addition, see what I wrote under the section "Degrees:"

Congratulations: you’re now probably working toward your B.A. (bachelor of arts) or B.S. (bachelor of science), which will probably take four years. If you earn that, you’ll have received your undergraduate degree.

It's easier to write "B.A." in most circumstances than B.A. or B.S. or S.B. or B.F.A. or the various other ways of getting cross the same basic idea.

I guess sarcasm is a big no-no around here (for various reasons.)

AFAIK, the two undergraduate degrees are B.A. and B.S. I just tried looking up S.B., and it appears to be just a different name for B.S.

This might sound trivial, but if I could go back in time and give myself one piece of advice, it would be to use a language other than C for Analysis of Algorithms.

I didn't know C very well yet, and trying to learn the algorithms material whilst being distracted by implementation details was simply not worth it. I'd tell my younger self: you're going to screw yourself out of both a grade and understanding of fundamental material.

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