This page does not represent the most current semester of this course; it is present merely as an archive.
We had several options for final papers in the past, one of which was “What I wish I had known about TAing but nobody told me.” Following are some quotes from those papers, as well as some quotes other TAs have volunteered explicitly for this site.
See also Jim Robert’s entire paper from Spring 2015. He TA’d nine (9) different classes and distilled his experience well.
If you have a quote to share, email Prof. Tychonievich.
I can honestly say that TAing has been the most rewarding aspect of my academic life.— wording from Divya Bhaskara; sentiment echoes by too many TAs to cite them all
I received a lot of advice on what to do and what to avoid and while every piece of advice served as a helpful tool in doing my job, the advice only truly made sense to me after I had experienced a variety of situations.— Leila Kouame
I wish I had known these tips going into my TA experience, but even if I had known them I probably wouldn’t have been able to use them right away. I had to learn by doing. Take all the lessons given by professors and other TAs and apply them, but also be flexible in your approach to TAing.— Nicholas Langemeier
Being a TA was harder work than I thought it would be. I knew getting the new course material down would be tough, but I wasn’t prepared for unprofessional students and took things too personally.
The best support system you have is your fellow TAs, and as long as you get prepared in advance and have your students’ best interest in mind, it will be a great experience for you and the students both.— Emily Zhou
Not all students are going to be friendly with you.— John Weber
It can be difficult to remember sometimes that being a TA is a job. This probably means that a certain level of professionalism is expected.— Rupali Vohra
Learning how to be a good TA isn’t something I was told how to do; I’ve had to figure it out as I’ve gone along.— Haley Bowler
Every lab has one or two students who are super annoying for whatever reason. With these students, you may not want to help them as much as other students. This should go without saying, but remember it’s part of your job to help all students and you just have to grin and bear it. Don’t avoid helping them just because they’re annoying – it’s not fair to them or to other TAs.— Anonymous
It is important to maintain an aura of legitimacy. Keeping control of a classroom, knowing when to check on students, making announcements properly, and having a well-run lab can all contribute to this.— Apoorva Arukumar
It is not necessary to always be the serious TA. Allowing yourself to get in a laugh or two with a students can greatly relieve stress and make a student’s day.— Leila Kouame
There were several aspects that surprised me – mostly relating to the sheer amount of time most of the TAing tasks required.— Nate Rathjen
TAing can take over your life (in a good-ish way) if you’re not careful. Create a schedule and stick to it, not necessarily to ensure that you provide at least x hours per week of work, but to ensure that you constrain TAing to x hours per week. It is human nature to want to help people (some individuals find this desire stronger than others), but there will always be another student who needs help.— Andrew Norton
Compose an escape line. You will go to a party where someone will say “Hey! You’re my TA!”
It will be awkward.
Figuring out your response ahead of time is a great idea. And then let me know what you came up with, because after 7 semesters, I still got nothing.— Casey Huang
It’s totally okay to tell people that you are off the clock and they should leave.— Sebastian Lerner
The deluge of office hour visitors wasn’t entirely predictable.— Nate Rathjen
Do what is required and do your best, but don’t try to do everything.— Stephen Feldman
Create a separate folder for Piazza emails [or change your Piazza account preferences to not send you email and check it online —Ed]. (This, in theory, works. What happened for me was I just forgot Piazza was ever a thing until my supervisor sent an angry email telling us to check Piazza.)— Casey Huang
I’ve come to expect someone to say “hey, you’re my TA!” when I’m in line at Bobo’s or I’m shopping at Trader Joe’s.— Dominic Richie
Don’t hang out in the stacks when you’re not on the clock.— Sebastian Lerner
Stick to your office hour schedule and leave when your time is up (staying “5 minutes longer” turns into an hour really easily). Create a scheduled time for Piazza and don’t use it as a procrastination tool.— Andrew Norton
Being a TA will require a lot of studying the material that you’re helping teach.— Cameron Blanchard
There is not point in showing up to lab early. Unlike being a student, showing up early doesn’t mean you get to finish early.— Lina He
I was in an environment where 20 students needed attention all at once. […] Of course, I knew going into the job that I would have a lot of people who needed help at once. I think it is a little unreal, however, the exact magnitude of what being a TA is like until you actually experience it for yourself.— Rupali Vohra
Don’t spend too much time with one person. Instead give them a few things to do work and then tell them to get on the queue again if they need help.— CS 1110 Office Hour Tips document
You don’t need to stay longer hours. There will be times when the queue is too huge to handle. You don’t need to stay longer than your obligated office hours, and you don’t need to help every student who will come up to you asking for help while you’re trying to get your own work done.— Casey Huang
When there is a hard lab, many students show up to office hours but the time for office hours is the same, so the amount of time that can be spent on each student is lower than usual. But the lab is hard, so each students wants/needs more help than usual. What to do then?
(paraphrase: If you limit time with each student, you’ll find a reasonable exception to that rule.) Now that you have one exception to the rule, you’ll start finding more edge cases. […] It ends up being much harder to say “I’m sorry, but I have to go” in real life than one might think.
One technique that other TAs have suggested is to limit the number of questions that people can ask rather than the amount of time.— Alec Grieser
Get to know your fellow TAs, both undergrad and grad. This is a major reason I stuck with TAing for way too long. There’s a really great community there. Plan a potluck, throw a party, or organize a skydiving trip like I always meant to but never did. (Because sometimes, after grading an exam, all you really want to do is jump out of a plane.)— Casey Huang
You will learn as much or more in the first semester TAing than you did when you took the class (or at least that’s what happened to me….sorry Bloomfield!). There’s nothing wrong with that and a good reason to ask the more experienced TAs questions. They remember how it was when they were new.— Bethany Connor
If I could give a word of advice to the new TAs, I would say not to be afraid to ask for the help of another TA or a professor if you cannot remember something in the course content. At times it can be difficult to find a particular bug in a student’s code, but oftentimes a new set of eyes is all it takes to solve a problem.— Walter King
Do not hesitate to ask for another TA’s help.— Monica Kou
I didn’t realize how much time [the TAs would] end up spending together. It’s great because I’ve met one of my best CS friends that way, but also a challenge if someone’s not necessarily your favorite person or if you disagree with the way another TA does things.— Xhama Vyas
A huge shout out to my fellow [course name redacted] TAs for being just stellar in generall.— Xhama Vyas
The best support system you have is your fellow TAs.— Emily Zhou
Do the homework ahead of time - even if you’ve already done it before! It’ll help jog your memory and hopefully give you an idea of other ways students might approach the problem.— Steph Colen
Attend TA meetings–don’t blow them off, even if your professor is ok with you doing so. It’s a great way to get a feel for how the class as a whole is doing, especially if grading guidelines for a course are vague.— Andrew Norton
I really had to know the concepts well enough to explain them to a little child. That’s not to call UVA students little children, but more to say I had to know my material better than I learned it in class. […] I made sure to go through all my old notes and lectures to make sure I was prepared.— Apoorva Arukumar
It is invaluable to do the homework sets before office hours. Even the material that was familiar to me would often have some phrasing of problem specification that I did not remember or did not anticipate.— Michael Cooper
I wish I had reviewed the [course redacted] material even more so that I could have been a more effective TA.— Anonymous
It is so important to try the homework assignments before office hours.
There is a difference between being prepared to answer questions about the course (all TAs have the theoretical background to do so) and being prepared to answer questions about the homework assignemts for the course. So be prepared and do the homework!— Emily Zhou
Students, like all other people, perform better with encouragement and smiles.— Emily Zhou
There should be an emphasis across the department made on individual problem solving, with TAs being told to only facilitate critical thinking and question answering such as “How can I figure out what is causing my issue?”. This may be be too big of a culture shift for some groups of TAs to make right away, but hopefully over time this can be achieved.— Jim Roberts
As a TA I feel that I am contributing to students’ attitudes towards computer science as well as their outlook on if the field is right for them.— Atallah Hezbor
People will come to you with unrelated questions. People have come to me about what classes to take, why I decided to be CS major, what to do if they didn’t get into the major, etc. If I had to communicate this situation to new TAs I would tell them that they never have to answer questions that are unrelated to their subject, and that they definitely shouldn’t if they don’t feel comfortable doing so, but that it’s also kind of cool that people want to come to you for advice.— Haley Bowler
Often the students are intimidated by the professors and come to the TAs because they feel more comfortable. While you shouldn’t let them walk all over you, it is okay to act more casual in order to allow them to trust you and feel comfortable asking you questions. This is also a good way to get feedback as to how to the course is going to the professor.— Bethany Connor
Know how to say “no.” I’ve gotten questions during office hours that have nothing to do with the course, but are just requests for help with general computer problems. When office hours are empty, it can be tempting to help with these general problems, but you want to make it clear that this can’t become a habit – you don’t want to be tech support for this student.— Andrew Norton
It would have been nice to know how many tech support-esque questions we’d receive. It would have been nice to receive guidance on how to answer these questions. I’ve learned to redirect this type of question to someone else on the teaching staff if I don’t know the answer.— Divya Bhaskara
People learn differently (aurally, visually, learning by doing, etc.), so if someone doesn’t understand your explanation of a certain topic, don’t repeat yourself – have backup explanations ready. Draw a picture, write code, or use a ridiculous analogy. Consider working from the bottom up (start with basics) or the top down (start with big picture).— (paraphrased by a TA from Wes Weimer)
Assuming they know everything from their previous classes confuses some students who don’t remember most of the stuff they learned in 2150 and earlier.— Cameron Blanchard
Sometimes the most efficient or useful strategy in my mind was not intuitive or even incomprehensible for some of my students. I learned to think adaptively, substituting new analogies and new methods of explanation when I saw that the students were confused.— Michael Cooper
My way of explaining things didn’t work on everybody. I tend to lean towards the visual teaching side, but not everybody responds to this. Some people just needed to be given some reading to do, others had to talk through the problem with somebody, and some of them I still don’t know the best way to teach.
Think of different ways of handling questions and prepare various styles of solutions to commonly-asked questions.— Nikhil Gupta
Sometimes the way in which I was explaining made no sense to the student. It was extremely difficult to step back from how I had always thought about the problem and figure out a new way to explain it. This got easier throughout the semester.— Madeline Watkins
Actually listen to what their problem is. Try not to generalize and start explaining how to fix the most common problem.— CS 1110 Office Hour Tips document
My listening skills have gotten infinitely better. A big part of the job is hearing the entirety of a student’s question, understanding it, and then responding to it appropriately.— Rupali Vohra
I discovered the differences in students’ expectations. Some would simply want a pointer in the right direction and would then dive into the task independently, but some needed extensive explanation of the concepts and more detailed guidance.— Atallah Hezbor
It’s important not to make assumptions about students based on their skill level. Some students that don’t know that much off the bat end up being the strongest in the course and showing the most dedication and perseverance, and not all students that are super knowledgeable are snarky nerds.— Xhama Vyas
I think a big part of being a successful TA is knowing how to pick up on the type of personality a student has, and responding to it appropriately. Some students are sarcastic and appreciate dry humor, while others feel insulted if that approach is used. Some need baby steps and handholding while others feel like their intelligence is being insulted with such an approach. Some students are so stressed out that you can tell they are on the verge of tears.— Rupali Vohra
Each person needs different informational guidance, put in different ways, spoken in different tones, presented at different rates, to arrive at the final conclusion—a conclusion they need to reach themselves.— Jonathan Youssef
It is easy to form a bias even at a subconscious level without making an effort not to do so.
I found myself feeling bad for some of the students and wanting to go the extra mile to help them, just because they were connecting with me in the emotional sense […] but I wouldn’t want to give the same attention to students that just seemed not to care, even if that was based off of my own perception. After realizing this, I made a conscious effort to treat each student equally.— Peter Bahng
Some people ask for help, but sometimes you have to ask people if they need help.— Cameron Blandford
Every student is unique, in how they communicate and learn and so asking the right guiding questions is a skill that takes time and experience to learn.— Leila Kouame
If there is one thing I with I had been warned about, it is something I had never anticipated being an issue: my closest friends. From day one, I had students texting me, calling me, even approaching me at social events to asks me questions about the class or request that I assign them to the project they wanted to work on.
It’s always weird to deal with a friend approaching you about the fact that you never responded to their text message asking for help.— Jacki Morin
Some of your friends will think they have certain privileges. Giving certain students help that others don’t have access to is unfair. I think that having to act differently around people because you are doing this job can be uncomfortable, so it’s good to be prepared for it.— Haley Bowler
I wish I had known how obnoxious and frustrating it can be when someone will constantly Facebook message me or pester me at the library asking for help when I’m trying to do my own work.— Apoorva Arukumar
It is not okay to make a student cry. We all know CS is at least 90% frustration, and probably more so if it’s a CS1 class. Be encouraging and tell them to take a break if they need to.— Casey Huang
Don’t ask the angry student across the table to repeat himself in the middle of his rant about TA incompetence.— Emily Zhou
I soon became aware that many students will put themselves down when they are encountering problems, and I had to find a way to provide help as well as be a source of encouragement.— Atallah Hezbor
At times students will be stressed and some of that frustration could get taken out on you as the TA. Dealing with frustrated students is part of the job, and so always keep your calm and try not to take students’ frustration personally.— Leila Kouame
I have heard complaints from students that a TA helped them but they did not find it helpful; however, TAs must also know how to exercise discretion and not provide too much help.— Atallah Hezbor
People will be mad at you. I didn’t realize how frustrated some people will get when you don’t tell them the answer. Sometimes people have tried to trick the answer out of me by asking things like “well how would you word this.”— Haley Bowler
Programming can sometimes be stressful, and in an environment where people discuss their progress, it can become easy for a student to feel behind or inadequate. It is a TAs job to not only provide help, but to provide encouragement when things aren’t going well.— Atallah Hezbor
Take [a class that has a reputation for being hard]. You’re a TA because you’re smart and you’re good at this stuff; but most of the people you’ll be helping out will be the ones who are struggling (and therefore be experiencing something very different from what you did). It’s a good idea to take [a hard class] so you’ll realize how it is feeling stupid and helpless and so, so, so desperately dependent on outside-of-lecture help.— Casey Huang
Although your goal is to complete our job and help students, don’t do so at the expense of your own well-being. If you fell as though a student is treating you disrespectfully, leave the situation and don’t hesitate to ask a fellow TA to provide help to the student instead.— Leila Kouame
[…] My first mistake to think that the student was accusing me directly. Actually, he was probably having a bad day and frustrated, took it out on us. We should not respond in kind. The right response to an angry stuent is to ask him to bring his concerns to the professor through either an appointment or anonymous feedback.— Emily Zhou
It’s okay to say you don’t know the answer to something.— Casey Huang
Be honest if you don’t know the answer to a question.— Stephen Feldman
If you really can’t figure it out, don’t be afraid to ask another TA or post on Piazza.— Casey Huang
I wish I had known how frustrating it is to give a bad or unsatisfying answer to a question.— Koleman Nix
TAing isn’t you knowing all the answers, but just figuring out a problem more quickly than the student.— Xhama Vyas
It was extremely hard ot say “I’m sorry, I don’t know,” but I strongly encourage future TAs to do so if they don’t know an answer.— Madeline Watkins
Nobody knows all the right answers. Being able to admit when you don’t know something demonstrates that your ego is not wrapped up in being right all the time. Implicitly, it says that their ego shouldn’t be either. Having a student ask you a question, to which you don’t know the answer, gives you a great opportunity to discover the answer together.‒ Jamie Tudor
There will be someone whose education you care more about than they do. Here will probably be someone who’s doing really badly, asking all the wrong questions, flunking exams, and not putting in any effort to do better. You’re a TA, not your job to fix ’em.— Casey Huang
Students expected my help to be a “magic bullet”. Given that I am TAing an upper-level CS class I expected the students to do a lot of troubleshooting themselves before coming to me as a last resort. It became fairly clear early on in the project timeline this would not necessarily be the case.— Nate Rathjen
All incoming TAs should be prepared to say no to people. You can say no if someone obviously just there for an answer.— Haley Bowler
Say no, and then direct students to a section in the book, a site online, or some other resource.— Nicholas Langemeier
Have a backbone. There will always be that one kid who’s a […] reincarnation - the one who INSISTS you walk them through the homework, and when you tell them to think for themselves, they pop back on the queue and ask another TA; or the student who’s too busy playing Candy Crush while you’re sitting there trying to debug their awful code … you’ll know ’em when you see ’em.
Don’t let them walk all over you and, especially towards the later homeworks, tell them that they need to work it out on their own. They can talk to you again when they’ve made progress.— Casey Huang
Don’t just tell them what’s wrong, make sure they understand why it’s wrong. We are teachers first, troubleshooters second.— CS 1110 Office Hour Tips document
A lot of students’ confusion stems from either their lack of having thoroughly evaluated the problem or their inability to understand or follow directions. […] It’s more valuable for the students to figure things out on their own.— Tahiya Salam
Be prepared for those students that want nothing but the solution out of you. They can be difficult to handle, but I found it worked to say “I think that is more than enough information to successfully solve this problem.”— Peter Bahng
Some of the students just don’t care. They just want to get by as painlessly as possible and willtry to exploit any loophole and use any shortcut they can find and, unfortunately, the shortcut is usually their TAs.— Kamille Foster
The hardest part of the job isn’t knowing how to solve all the problems but having the patience to let the students solve them themselves (as opposed to doing it for them).— Robert Mina
Show them how you’d go about finding out the answer - google it, stack overflow it, look it up in the syllabus. They’ll learn how to answer stupid questions on their own, and you’ll be making yourself more approachable by removing the initial intimidation of “ermagerd its a ta.”— Casey Huang
Learn how to postpone a question. Students have a tendency to ask rapid-fire questions about problems that aren’t causally related. This can be frustrating because you’re dealing with a disorganized thought process (or, sometimes, a deep confusion over what errors are related). Keeping a student on track by saying “we’ll get to question 2 after discussing question 1” is invaluable.— Andrew Norton
One of the best ways to help someone is to ask them questions that lead them in the right direction, rather than telling them directly what they are doing right/wrong.— Joseph Scott
Ask the student to explain their code and problem before jumping to a solution is a useful teaching tool. You will better understand the problem and have time to formulate a response, the student will understand what they have done fully (solving other problems in the code), and the student will often come to the solution in the process.— Ben Matthews
Listening is just as important as talking because everything someone says is a clue about what they do and don’t know and what they expect from me.— Haley Bowler
Help them get in the habit of reading official docs. Dont just tell them what the method is that does such and such, look it up online with them.— Joseph Scott
It might be tempting to just give kids the answers, especially when they’ve been struggling for a while, but do your best not to use their computers at all and not just tell them the solution. Try to guide them to the solution with pointed questions, or dictate what to type while debugging - many of them will learn it better if they’re the ones actually doing the work!— Steph Colen
Something Rupali does well that I am still working on is just telling the students “I think you can figure that out” or “That’s your job to figure out.”— Leon Zhan
Learn and use Bash. There’s a lot of repetitive tasks in grading, especially for intro courses–for instance, unzipping files, compiling a program, and possibly feeding in sample input. It’s so much easier to spend 10 minutes writing a bash script for the whole assignment to save a minute per assignment.— Andrew Norton
I’m always concerned that I’m not grading my students’ assignments the same way as all the other TAs, or that I’m giving too much/little help during office hours. Just by meeting up and talking with the other TAs, even if you don’t directly discuss grading standards, etc, will give you a better understanding of the mindset of everyone else.— Andrew Norton
Use Google Forms to make things easy on yourself, especially for lab TAs. A well-designed Google form can make it very easy for you to assign grades. In effect, you’re crowdsourcing the initial steps of grading by pushing the organization of data onto the students.— Andrew Norton
Grading guidelines sometimes leave a lot of decision making to the TAs. Be consistent when grading and don’t worry too much about the small details.— Lina He
I was surprised how much time and energy goes into grading assignments and exams. I had never quite realized how long it can take to grade 130 exams or papers. After spending over 4 hours grading the first midterm, I had a lot more respect for professors that are still willing to create 4+ page exams anyway.— Kelsey Hewett
It is especially weird when you know the professors you are TAing for as a professor before you know them as a boss.— Rupali Vohra
Talk to the professors you TA for, and other professors too. There’s a lot to learn from them, and that’s partially why you’re TAing, right? Strike up a conversation. Ask Sherriff about Samantha, or ask Bloomfield about how he feels about judging errors in ICPC (and let him know that he’s been using Linux for longer than you were alive, he loves that). Works 100% of the time.— Casey Huang
I was shocked to find that Professor [name redacted] doesn’t provide any material for TAs.— Michelle Wang
Don’t be afraid to ask for help (and then actually do it). This has actually been said or implied every time that I have TA’d but I didn’t take it to heart and try to do it until later.— Jim Roberts
Another big portion of being a TA has nothing to do with interacting with students, but has a lot to do with interacting with the professors of the course and fellow TAs. […] It is hard to ask questions because everyone else already seems to know what is going on, and it can be unclear which questions should be addressed to whom. I often felt like I was bothering both professors and other TAs by asking potentially obvious questions, but at the same time I knew that I had to ask the questions since the answers to those questions affected how I interacted with students, and that was an important interaction to get correct.
[When asked, her supervisors both expressed appreciation for her habit of asking lots of questions. —Ed]— Rupali Vohra
If I could give a word of advice to the new TAs, I would say not to be afraid to ask for the help of another TA or a professor if you cannot remember something in the course content. At times it can be difficult to find a particular bug in a student’s code, but oftentimes a new set of eyes is all it takes to solve a problem.— Walter King
It may seem like some colleagues are more approachable than others but we all love the field and love talking about it so you should not be afraid to ask questions of someone who miht know more than you.— Leila Kouame
Don’t pull up your e-mail in front of a lecture hall of students. […] You will be embarrassed. It’s also probably a good idea to keep talking about drinking [etc.] to a minimum when in front of a lecture hall.— Anonymous
Enjoy every moment of your TA experience – you may remember it fondly one day.— Stephen Feldman
Don’t freak out if you mess up - it happens to all of us.
[Examples of mistakes (some amusingly embarrassing) removed —Ed]— Casey Huang
You get out of the experience what you put in. If you want to give a guest lecture or create a new assignment or even modify an existing one, ask your professor. It could be a huge help to your professor, and an awesome new experience for you!— Jackie Morin
You do not need to TA the same class for 7 semesters.— Casey Huang
Don’t overthink it.— CS 1110 Office Hour Tips document
Avoid Thornton Stacks when you’re not TAing. You will be bugged for help. You will get no work done.— Casey Huang
You can order a pizza from Thornton Stacks. But eating → extra saliva → spitting all over students while you talk. So while in theory this is a great idea, you should probably bring a facemask with you if you plan on ordering a pizza during office hours.— Casey Huang
The mother of a student in the class I was TAing for approached me during office hours to ask for help on behalf of the student. I do not believe this situation arises frequently, but I would suggest being prepared for parents or friends of students coming to office hours for help.— Monica Kou
First rule of office hours: focus on the student you’re helping. Do not help other students along the way.— Emily Zhou