Fall Student Led Comments 2015
It’s junior year, the year in where we begin our journey into the workload that we will be receiving in college. However, I feel like I’ve managed to handle this work. I have definitely had many successes throughout the year but have also faced challenges along the way. Either way, I’ve grown a lot since the beginning of the semester.
I grew a lot being a TA. I am very proud of how much dedication I put into it and how it expanded my knowledge. I would spend lunches and nights creating the lesson to contribute and expand the knowledge of my fellow peers. They say that if you teach it, it helps you understand it better. Which was true. When you have to teach it to someone, you have to be prepared to understand a lot of the concepts. Teaching is something that can definitely be applied to any situation since you have to help others in any area so that the cycle of growing continues. Being a TA helped me develop the goal in making sense of the problem and persevere in solving them. To teach it to the class, I needed to have a good conceptual understanding of the topic and then dig deep in because there would be problems or instances that needed deeper knowledge. Wow, as I actually look up my past goals, that was my number one goal! That is pretty awesome that I was able to fulfill a struggle that I completely forgot about.
As for challenges, TA was also a main challenge I had. Eventually I learned that you can’t exactly compose a lesson the day before the lesson. You need time to understand the topic, create a lesson, and understand the problems you are giving them. I should have assumed that procrastination would not be beneficial as it’s not a good idea in any case. But procrastination did bite me a couple of times since I was trying to scramble in as much knowledge as I could in a short time which led to confusion shown in my probability lesson. These topics are hard so I need to make sure to give myself time to really digest everything. Reasoning abstractly and quantitatively was something I tended not to do. I definitely should have broadened my research during the TA lessons.
I feel like next semester will be good. I definitely realized I am not the teaching type and will prefer to not be the one up front explaining complex topics to 30 other kids. Now that I took on this challenge, I will pursue another one to keep deepening my knowledge.
I grew a lot being a TA. I am very proud of how much dedication I put into it and how it expanded my knowledge. I would spend lunches and nights creating the lesson to contribute and expand the knowledge of my fellow peers. They say that if you teach it, it helps you understand it better. Which was true. When you have to teach it to someone, you have to be prepared to understand a lot of the concepts. Teaching is something that can definitely be applied to any situation since you have to help others in any area so that the cycle of growing continues. Being a TA helped me develop the goal in making sense of the problem and persevere in solving them. To teach it to the class, I needed to have a good conceptual understanding of the topic and then dig deep in because there would be problems or instances that needed deeper knowledge. Wow, as I actually look up my past goals, that was my number one goal! That is pretty awesome that I was able to fulfill a struggle that I completely forgot about.
As for challenges, TA was also a main challenge I had. Eventually I learned that you can’t exactly compose a lesson the day before the lesson. You need time to understand the topic, create a lesson, and understand the problems you are giving them. I should have assumed that procrastination would not be beneficial as it’s not a good idea in any case. But procrastination did bite me a couple of times since I was trying to scramble in as much knowledge as I could in a short time which led to confusion shown in my probability lesson. These topics are hard so I need to make sure to give myself time to really digest everything. Reasoning abstractly and quantitatively was something I tended not to do. I definitely should have broadened my research during the TA lessons.
I feel like next semester will be good. I definitely realized I am not the teaching type and will prefer to not be the one up front explaining complex topics to 30 other kids. Now that I took on this challenge, I will pursue another one to keep deepening my knowledge.