Re:Can too many brainy people be a dangerous thing?
by Jtsummers on Thursday October 29, 2020 @11:53AM
(#24931820)
As a student starting at that time, it was actually very frustrating. Universities hadn't caught up on having enough lecturers/TAs (or they hired a lot of TAs but they were very inexperienced and your odds of getting a good one were not good). Class sizes soaring also meant reduced time with instructors in office hours, and reduced opportunities for working with researchers (that is, a decent but average student had a shot before, but suddenly had none due to the glut of candidates).
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Re:Can too many brainy people be a dangerous thing?
by godelski on Thursday October 29, 2020 @12:17PM
(#24932100)
The TA thing is pretty normal. I'm a TA this term as my new funding is being being worked out because it takes 6 months to do. So I'm TAing a class on assembly which I have no experience and don't even have a CS undergraduate degree. It sucks for us too as a have one class that expects 30hrs/wk of work (+another class), my research (what I want to spend all my time on), and TAing takes 18hrs/wk.
You're only going to get a good TA when that professor is teaching a class that's their focus and has a grad student that has that fucus AND that student isn't on other research funding. The system is far from optional for either undergrads or grads. Believe me, I'm not happy either