The End of the Semester.2

On the way to my very last discussion section, my preferred discussion section, I ran into an old professor of mine, who is teaching a different section of the class that I TA for.

Emily: "Professor Bluerd, it's good to see you! I'm actually on my way to my very last discussion section."

PB: "You know, I just this very minute got done teaching my last class of the semester!"

Emily [with a sigh]: "Aren't you sad?"

PB [giving me a rather confused, confused look]: "Well, I guess it's sort of bittersweet." (I think he meant to say, "What sort of wet-behind-the-ears teacher are you to be sad about the end of the semester?")

So, I proceeded to my last discussion section of the semester, which was fortunate (not the fact that I proceeded there, but that it was my last of the semester) because I have been losing control of my Wednesday section since my return from Spain (lest you judge too harshly my ability to manage a classroom, which are, as you, my dear, generous reader shall see, in fact, limited, it's only been three discussion sections).

Well, today was the most lost control of. I won't say the worst, because it actually increases my enjoyment of class. Anyway, this class, I couldn't, for the life of me, get them to focus on Marx (which wasn't a strictly necessary, actually, since we'd [the half of the class that didn't leave early for Thanksgiving break] talked about him last class, and two discussions may be just too much Marx). At one point, I went off on, and I mean really got fired up about, Marx's use of stages, which other thinkers we've read this semester didn't employ. I was emotional on this point, but just as I was reaching the culmination of my rant, I realized I had no idea what it all related to. So I finished calmly with, "I don't really know where I was going with that."

One of my students, who, as I found out tonight, is a fan of mine, we shall call her, "C," said, "No! That was really interesting." And proceeded to explain why. She followed her explanation with a declaration of how much she liked me as a TA and how the boys in the class better not try to make any moves on me.

One final point: I once again reflected on the absurdity of picking out three words to describe your TA on the TA evaluation form. So when I returned to the room when they were [mostly] finished filling out the forms, I wrote on the board:

intelligent
articulate
beautiful

and told them that those three words were, in fact, the proper answer to that question on the form. I guess I forgot "clever."