Hello all.
Not going to lie, this week was a little rougher than last
week so you’ve been warned.
Monday was a little crazy. I had the TA meeting in the
morning, where we mostly talked about how we would be teaching for the first
week. We’re supposed to be very understanding with our students and help them
as much as we can thanks to COVID—no pressure. Note the fact that that was some
very heavy sarcasm. Anyways, I also had my Evo Devo class which is asynchronous
on Mondays thankfully. We needed to read an article about Haeckel’s embryology
drawings and discuss the controversy behind it. It was actually a really
interesting article that didn’t take any sides and presented a pretty decent amount
of information. So all in all, Evo Devo was fun. Then came the dreaded time
where I had to go on campus and do my first Zoom call as a TA. It was awful. I
was stumbling over my words, I didn’t know how to interact with anyone, and I
think I made a fool of myself. The students weren’t really prepared either,
which kind of exacerbated the problem and didn’t help at all. After that
nightmare I came home and had a couple of minutes before our ministering
brothers came over along with one of their roommates. It was kind of chaotic
and I didn’t really want them over, but we’d made plans to, so I kind of just…
let it happen. I was so drained by the time scriptures came around that as soon
as the family phone call was done, I decided I wasn’t going to do anything
else. They didn’t leave until around 10:30 or something crazy like that, since
I was still awake and could hear them. It was rough.
The next day wasn’t much better. I teach lab at 7:30 in the
morning on Tuesdays. And in this class, no one spoke to me or turned their
cameras on. There were maybe four questions put in the chat and it was super
awkward even though I felt I didn’t stumble as much. However, this group of
students felt a little more put together and prepared, which was nice. After
that, I came home and kind of hid away for the first while until my next class:
Neuroendo. We talked a lot about gender and how hormones relate to it on multiple
levels, which was a little controversial, but I mostly just kept quiet. After
that I had the Seminar, which was really, really cool this week! On campus we
have a spider silk lab that you can work with for undergraduate research—I didn’t
because I didn’t know how much spiders would be involved, but it seemed
interesting. The guy who spoke at the seminar was the guy in charge of the experiment.
Apparently their working with hagfish slime too, which is ten times more
interesting the the spider silk. They’re hoping to be able to help the navy
with a way to catch ships long enough to interrogate them so they wont cause
trouble by stalling motors. So in short their combining silk worms, spider silk,
and hagfish slime to create a cool net like spool of thread that could also be
used in preventing the use of plastics. Overall, it was the most interesting
thing I’ve seen so far (sadly even more than the immunology and social behavior
of rat experiment too).
On Wednesday I met with multiple students to help them with
R, which kind of sucked, but it was okay. I also had to teach the discussion
about the developmental hourglass in Evo Devo. I think it went well—there was a
lot of talking happening, and while there were a few rabbit holes, we covered
the concept really well. I think I got a good grade on it and now I don’t have
to worry about it anymore. However, it wore me out like no other. After that,
some more R issues with students, and a couple dozen dishes later, I kind of spiraled
into a meltdown, but I was able to calm myself and then play Minecraft to
destress. Being a TA is really, really hard and I hate it so far—I feel so
incompetent about these things, and the students and I are both not good with R
which makes things worse. Anyways, I ended up not going to the New Graduate
Student Social—I don’t think I would have been able to handle it at all. I just
spent a decent amount of time on Minecraft and writing with Maren before
calling it a night.
Thursday was crazy. After the low of Wednesday, however, it
didn’t seem too bad in comparison. We talked about Individual Development Plans
in Intro to Grad Studies, which was boring, but the quiz was nice and easy.
After that I had even more meetings with students having trouble with R.
Neuroendo was about gender stuff even more—and we had a long discussion about
intersex and how different species determine sex (I feel really comfortable
with that material since it’s interesting. Clownfish and parrotfish are
awesome, so of course I looked stuff up). After that there were even more
meetings with students, one even going up until the exact minute that I had a
meeting with the Freeman Lab. We just generally caught up, talked about
experiments, and discussed an article about basic neuroscience that Sara was a
part of. And then… more emails and meetings
with students. If you couldn’t tell, I spent a lot of time in meetings on Thursday—the
day that the lab report thing is due. I was up until 10 working with one
student, before calling it a night when they seemed to have it in control.
Of course the next day, I woke up to three more emails from
students struggling. *Sigh* This semester is going to be rough. Thankfully
though, Friday ended up being the best day of the week. I went on campus to
Luke’s Café, where I tried a new option on the menu (they got rid of my old
favorite and I’m still a little sad) that was still surprisingly delicious
(gosh I love pepperoncini’s). After that we headed back and I started to work
through reading for next week and then grading lab reports. The latter task was
grueling and I officially feel like a piece of garbage for teaching, but I
followed the rubric and people could have asked for more help from me. Most seemed
to do really well though, so that’s a good sign. Hopefully. After that I took
the day off for the most part. I hopped on Minecraft again, watched some funny youtube
videos. Karin, Allie, and Tim came over to hang out and I made popcorn. It was
a nice, enjoyable evening and a good reprieve from the rest of the week.
And that leads to today. I’m waiting on my laundry to be
done, then I just have to prep for next week and I can have another nice Saturday.
I mean, chores will still need to be done, but it won’t take too long. So yeah…
Hopefully next week is better.
It's going to get easier. Just hang in there. You can do it.
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