Things that piss off TAs

Most teaching assistants try to be helpful, and most students are great, but a minority can be frustrating because they don't understand how to get the most of a TA. Okay, let's be direct: as the title says, some of these can really piss off a TA who might be wrestling multiple classes worth of students and their own research or academic career. Here is a list of things not to do. Feel free to edit.

• Insist that they re-teach everything in office hours because you couldn't get out of bed for lecture or discussion. (Genuine confusion is acceptable.)
  

• Send them emails at 2:30 am about questions for a homework set due at 8 am. Just because you're up late at night cramming doesn't mean we are.
  

• Be a grade grubber.
  

• Insist on a review session then come completely unprepared hoping to just "listen".
  

• Expect them to shove material down your throat. Seriously, some thinking is sometimes appropriate.
  

• Get frustrated by the TA because the material is difficult, the exam was tricky or the homework complicated. TAs don't pick the material, usually don't write the exam and while sometimes they write the homework, wouldn't you rather see the hard problems on the homework than on the exam?
  

• Ask them to write letters of recommendation. They probably wouldn't mind, but a letter of recommendation from a TA is only slightly more useful than a letter of recommendation from your roommate. You need to talk to your professor, if you don't know your professor, get to know him/her.
  

• Send them emails in text speak. 'cuz we r worried u'll send 1 2 an employer or prof 1 day
  

• Write jibberish on short answer/essay questions. You think we're not smart enough to see through B.S.?
  

• Recognizing them when they're dressed slutty at Sophia's. TAs need to get laid too sometimes.
  

• Write with handwriting only you can understand.
  

• 10th week ask for additional office hours when no one has shown up to regular office hours all quarter.
  

• Ask for a review session or additional office hours and then not show up.
  

• Send papers by email in order to miss class when the paper is to be turned in.
  

• When students act as if TAs owe them our complete and total devotion. TAs are paid very little, could probably make better money somewhere else, and most go above and beyond the 20 hours per week that we are legally paid for. Be grateful that budget cuts haven't cut them out of classes entirely.
  

• Show up for a lab 1 hour into a 2 hour session and ask, "Do I have time to finish this today?"
  

• Plagiarism, particularly when the offender plagiarizes the TA, the professor, or Wikipedia.
  

• Addressing them as Mr., Mrs., or Ms., something that both makes them feel like a kindergarten teacher and reaffirms that they don't have their degree yet.
  

• Asking, "Is this going to be on the exam?"
  

• When a student starts off a quarter with their mind closed off to good communication with the TA —often stimulated by blanket generalizations about TAs.
  

• Not following the directions on the assignment.
  

• Answering the question you wish the professor asked, rather than the one that they actually did.
  

• Not asking questions in discussion. That's what we're there for. Take advantage of it!
  

• Asking us to give you the answer to your assignment. We want you to do well, but we can't tell you the answers before you turn in the assignment!
  

• Not expressing your answer clearly, or in sufficient detail to prove that you actually understand the question.

See also: Lies that TAs tell students

Comments:

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2006-09-11 17:03:58   Okay, I so write jibberish because it's a short-answer answer. Unless it says "two sentences or less" (and this is sometimes the case) I save the essays for the last part of the test and I write as much as I can until time runs out so that you can sift out the parts you like and what you don't. I'm guilty of some of the other stuff, too, but I understand your frustration. —SS

2006-09-11 22:17:38   12. 10th week ask for additional office hours when no one has shown up to regular office hours all quarter —JimEvans

2006-09-12 06:38:13   Oooh, that's a good one. We take time out of our schedule (time we don't have to give) and nobody shows up, that drives me up the wall. It should be moved up the list a little bit. —AmyGoogenspa

2006-09-12 08:42:22   Do you know what pisses me off? When TAs complain about my handwriting and dock me points. I never have had much in the way of fine motor control and it takes me nearly 10 times longer to write neatly than in my normal scrawl. If you wanna blame someone, blame the prof for not letting me use my laptop to write whatever it is that you're reading. —WilliamLewis

2006-09-12 10:48:58   Test = time pressure = must finish test before time runs out = crappier handwriting = take it as part of the job —JoAnnaRich

2006-09-12 11:56:54   If you have a serious condition with your handwriting, go talk to the TA about it. He/She will most likely be receptive to special needs, but normally bad handwriting is taken as a sign of disrespect. —AmyGoogenspa

2006-09-12 12:13:36   And what if people just have poor penmenship? We're growing up in the computer age where assignments are typed and printed. The only handwriting I do in class is for tests. Face it: people have poor penmenship nowadays. —JoAnnaRich

I was beaten as a kid for not practicing better handwriting. It didn't work. My handwriting is not only bad sometimes, it changes styles completely a few times over the course of an exam. Graphologists may say I'm insane. — MarieHuynh

So if we undergrads have horrible penmanship, we're trying to be disrespectful? That makes no sense. You take things way too personally. My penmanship sucks because it never was any good and I type nearly everything these days. It doesn't suck because I want to make my poor TA's life miserable. —WilliamLewis

I'm with the TAs on this one. It's like someone typing up an essay in netspeak and then saying it's because (from the more believable) "I've never learned how to properly type" to (perhaps the real situation occurring here) "I spend to much time on MySpace and this is how they type so I do too." Honestly, if I were a TA, I'd believe the latter. Someone with bad handwriting would be kind of the same situation to me. It's like saying "You're a TA and I'm in a hurry, you can decipher what I said because I hate this test anyway." If you want a better grade, learn to write legibly and coherently. Though, admittedly, I don't think I write fantastically and have never had a comment on my handwriting. If someone is writing bad enough that the TA literally has to write something about how bad it is, just drop out of college. Literacy is rather important both in reading in communication if you plan on getting a degree. —SS


• Point is she thinks that bad handwriting is purposefully disrespectful which is not the case. Test are timed. When I'm under time pressure, my handwriting isn't as nice as it could be if I had all the time in the world. Bad handwriting does not translate to being disrespectful or hating the TA.
  

• Actually, I don't believe the original post mentioned anything about timed tests. I don't think it was a personal attack and I believe the intent was to point out the difficulties of reading truly illegible handwriting versus poor handwriting.
  

• normally bad handwriting is taken as a sign of disrespect
  

• I agree that assignments should be marked with neat handwriting, or typed, but I would disagree that poor handwriting is disrespectful on an exam. Irritating yes, disrespectful no. Timed exams are an stressful and incredibly unnatural situation— they ask students to quickly regurgitate information onto a piece of paper, so it's no wonder that people's penmanship approach is likewise vomitous. Most exams don't give students sufficient time to clearly construct their argument, organize their evidence, etc. before writing an answer. If a prof or TA expects neat handwriting on an exam, they should give students as much time as they want to formulate their thoughts and write them out, do take home exams, or have them type up their written responses after the exam period. Also, ideas rapidly fade if they are not rapidly expressed. Paying attention to handwriting can break a train of thought, sometimes to the devestation of a test answer. That all said, students should be warned that poor penmanship puts TA's in a bad mood, requires that a TA read answers more carefully, and makes it more likely that the TA will detect an error in an answer. As with physical attractiveness, attractiveness in handwriting unfairly gives certain people an unfair advantage of others. Nobody said life was fair ... —CraigBrozinsky
  

2006-09-13 13:36:27   Almost all of the above annoyances are because we sometimes get the feeling that (a minority) of students think their time is more important than ours. This kind of behavior doesn't work in the working world, and it shouldn't pass in college either. Now if there is a legitimate handwriting disability, I'm sure most TAs would be more than happy to work with the student about it. What is frustrating are students who leave a poorly written mess on a piece of paper that I can't read. I'm not asking for i's dotted with hearts, or perfectly round o's, and I understand there is a time constraint on exams, but usually the offenders on the exams are offenders on the homeworks as well. The time difference between legible and illegible is about a minute. Struggling over illegible writing takes an extra ten minutes at least—multiply that by 120 and you'll see why it pisses us off. Really poor handwriting tells me "I don't value your time enough to make it possible for you to read this." Look, I hate taking off points. I'm a softie TA that wants to give everyone A's because I see how hard you work, but if I really can't read your writing, then I can't grade it either. Writing legibly is a part of communicating effectively. —AmyGoogenspa

21. A sense of entitlement. There's nothing worse than a person who believes they deserve success and/or special consideration just because.

22. Not being aware you're in college. If you act like a highschool student, I'll treat you like one. Take some responsibility for yourself.

23. If you weren't listening to the professor give the topic for the essay, you can just stick that puppy-dog-face/look-of-righteous-indignation right up your own ass. And no, I won't tell you how long a "short answer" is. Answer the damn question, use the leftover space to practice embellishing your resumé.

24. Don't ask for an extension after the damn deadline.

I should also say that I would have docked points for some of the shoddier sentences in this thread.

As for the whole "handwriting" debate: In all fairness, some students with excellent handwriting have absolutely nothing worthwhile to say. However, some students purposefully create illegible scribbles to cover not being able to answer the question. Try asking a student with an unusally illegible answer to read it out loud for you. I'll give you good odds he/she can't do it. Also, keep in mind, we have to spend our time trying to figure out what you've written. A good mood this does not make. If you don't ever write by hand, try it some time. A little practice can't hurt you, it might give you an edge if you are able to neatly and clearly write the customer's order number on his or her receipt. After all, college is all about gaining skills to use in your career.

Which brings me to the last portion of my rant: use college as an opportunity to find what you love. Don't just take the courses your parents expect you to take, branch out. Explore. If you don't give a crap about what you're studying, it shows in your work. We can tell. We see it every time we look at you. You do not want to be there, you do not want to work, you could not care less about what you might be learning. Good god, go out and find a class that moves you. Find a subject that makes you want to learn more. They're out there, and if worst comes to worst, no matter how useless your major may seem, you can always go into academia. Otherwise you curse yourself to a career you will despise just as much as your education, and you will be mean to your spouse and your children because you're unhappy eight to ten hours a day. Think of the children. Please, think of the children.

—WillKaufman

Not being aware you're in college. If you act like a highschool student, I'll treat you like one. Take some responsibility for yourself.
Don't assume we all act like highschool students and also, lead by example. If you ever, ever show up or grade something late and then tell us whatever excuse you have without giving us a note from the health center or a death certificate, that's unfairly treating us like a highschool student if we do it too and you stare down your nose at us. Consider that we do take responsibility but expect you to understand that not all of us lie and some of us in fact do have legitimate excuses for things just like yours.

A sense of entitlement. There's nothing worse than a person who believes they deserve success and/or special consideration just because.
Just because? Just because we worked our asses off to get into college and then to stay in it for however many years? Just because we actually did spend all night working on that essay without sleep because the professor in our other class (you know, the one you never acknowledge exists) scheduled his midterm the day before and we were studying for three days straight over it? Just because you had to reschedule office hours and neglected to realize that we take our time seriously too? Just because after much hard work and hours spent, you're shooting us this condescending look for not "understanding" material that we clearly made a good effort to understand and don't in fact have a degree in the subject?
...Mind you, I expect teachers to make a statement like this. TAs are generally nice and helpful, but every once in a while you come across one who thinks that because they grade your work they have power over you. This isn't true. We do the work, you give us the appropriate grade for the work. If there is a sense of entitlement, it mostly happens because you might be treating us like there was no effort made, or we were somehow up for 5 nights in a row partying our asses off and now want special consideration for alcohol problems. Not cool, dude. Many of us actually do want to do something with ourselves; I don't think TAs or students need to make it harder on each other with assuming their lives are invalid.

If you weren't listening to the professor give the topic for the essay, you can just stick that puppy-dog-face/look-of-righteous-indignation right up your own ass.
Aw, man. Though, why wouldn't the topic be posted online? Is that special treatment?

Don't ask for an extension after the damn deadline.
I generally ask for one right before. It's not like I plan things to fuck up.

— SS

2006-09-14 08:28:13   I thought this page was suppose to be funny/humorous, why are we all arguing about points? Someone should make a (funny) counter-point page. —MichelleAccurso *I was surprised by the handwriting comment hitting such a nerve. Who knew there was so much trouble brewing in discussion section!

2006-09-14 11:51:46   I think this semi-anonymous TA-student war is kind of funny (and ironic since TAs also have TAs and students may someday be TAs). But on the serious side, it's really a minority of students that pull this stuff. Well, almost everyone begs for a review session then comes unprepared, or asks for extra office hours but then we end up sitting alone, but lots of undergrads are waaayyy more mature than I was in undergrad. Saul writes way better than 90% of the students in my class. I wonder if he could explain dimishing marginal benefit so eloquenly (and you have 5 minutes to do so—go!) —AmyGoogenspa

2006-09-14 12:51:10   I personally had no problem being called Mr. as a TA. I mean, you don't have the degree yet, right? And if a student wants to be formal, its a sign of respect, not belittling. You might only be a few years older (maybe even younger) than your students, but you are in a position of authority. —ErikKlemetti

2006-09-15 11:49:12   I think being called Mr. or Ms. is totally weird. The idea of being Dr. someday is bizarre as well, I have my students call me Darth. —AmyGoogenspa

• I hope you don't have a Masters degree— then they might call you a Master Vader. ;-)—CraigBrozinsky
  

• Some people call me Darth without my asking ... is that a bad sign? —BrentLaabs
  

2006-09-15 12:50:27   You will rue the day you called me "Ma'am"! —MarieHuynh