The Tartan

I have a lot of respect for my TAs, even the bad ones. It’s not easy to be the apple of 15 to 25 students’ eyes. Plus, students often don’t even know the material super well, so it’s a bit hypocritical for them to want their TAs to be super duper experts. I have had math TAs, computer science TAs, and history TAs. They were each different and spiritually beautiful in their own ways, even the grad students. 

Quick side note for those who don’t know what a TA is because they are under the age of 16 or over the age of 70: TA is short for teaching assistant. These teaching assistants assist teaching, sometimes on a very personal level. (Though not too personal, or they’d get fired.) To analogize in terms of scholarly mentors, college professors are just professors, and their TAs are your doting childhood teachers (if they were paid more and pregnant less). 

Math TAs are lone wolves. They teach their recitation to dwindling numbers of students as the semester goes on, but you don’t see them complain. The math TA loves the calm of a class of three students in the depths of Baker Hell, and the empty office hours in a quiet Wean closet. Sometimes the math TA will give you the exact answers to the homework, and sometimes they’ll give you the exact answers to something that isn’t the homework. The math TA is often not even a math major, usually poached from physics or statistics or assorted business. Math TAs are also paid nearly $20 per hour, so they can’t complain.

CS TAs are a collective. Hiring 15 students per class costs lots of money, so the School of Computer Science hires one hive mind and splits them into 15 separate beings. Don’t be fooled by surface-level differences like their appearances or their personalities — they share a social security number and everything! Each hivemind can be distinguished by their strong opinions on functions and their hilarious jokes about stupid math concepts nobody cares about. Also, they run all the CS classes while the actual professors don’t do anything. I have no clue why nobody has blown the whistle on this, it feels like this should be a bigger deal. The CS professors really, really don’t do anything, their hivemind TAs run the show.

History TAs work hard, play hard, love hard, die hard. Your easy A is their distraction from their soul-sucking PhD dissertation on the development of gristmill bonds as early examples of futures markets in 1680s Amsterdam. Like that, everyone’s happy.

TAs are such a present part of our Carnegie Mellon lives, but I fear that we’ve become accustomed to them and forget how important they are for learning just that little bit more before our finals and for inching right over that C/B line. TAs are humans just like us, and I have decided to appreciate them. Will you?