Do the Boring Things

There is so much to be said about what to do inside the classroom. Be caring, be kind, be approachable. Be excited. Add in details that make the subject more fun. Be prepared and know how to start simple and work your way up to complicated, or start concrete and work your way up to abstract. Always encourage.

What's often forgotten is all the other stuff – the behind the scenes work that makes courses really run. You need to create assignments, grade homeworks and exams, organize office hours and recitations or labs, and carefully record what has happened to avoid making the same mistakes twice. These aren't often the exciting or glamorous parts of teaching, but they are, in many ways, more essential than what we do in the classroom every week.

If you want to have a big impact, do the boring things. Create clearer and fairer grading rubrics. Double check the homeworks for mistakes before releasing them. Grade faster and release feedback sooner. Make the course expectations and policies clearer. No one will mention it in your TA feedback; no one will know that you did it. But everyone – not just the students you directly teach – will be a little less frustrated, learn a little more, and be a little happier with the course. Those little improvements matter more than anyone will ever say. They add up like nothing else you do.

In my time at CMU, I've taught and TA'd 5 courses. Two StuCos (shoutout to Doctor WhoCo and Hype for Types!) and three academic courses: 15-150, 15-312, and 15-317 . I'll never really know if or how the students of those classes remember me, but I hope that I made things a little less frustrating, a little clearer, and a little more fun for them. I do know that I learned so much from them, and that they shaped my time at CMU in a beautiful and irreplaceable way. I don't think I could ever thank them enough.