For Tomorrow We TA

I already am having TA issues, and the class hasn't even met yet. My prof wants me to come early to help him carry his instruments to the classroom. Normal request, but I have my therapy appointment down town right before this class. I can make it... I have an hour from end of therapy til class starts... but figured I would be a few minutes graced with leeway.

Not so apparently.

I'm not about to tell him that the reason I can't come early is for therapy. My prized friday morning therapy time slot. But what other excuse can I make that will pacify him?

Oh, and he already has me buying bristol board for him. I have a feeling I am about to become an executive assistant type of TA. We shall see?

Oh, and his surname is one of my cats' names. Too funny.

Yeah, but already irked. I never took this course ($educational $psych) in undergrad so I don't even know what to expect really. He will apparently have a textbook waiting for me. Time to earn my money, boys and girls!

I suppose I should also mention the killer stats exam I had on Wednesday? Now, I LOVE math, I even love stats. I get sexually excited about the visual display of quantitative information. And yet, this prof has managed to suck the love of $univariate $stats from me almost completely. The exam was scheduled for 3 hours. No one finished it. Most of us concurred that 5 or 6 hours would have been more suitable. BRUTAL. Killer. In the middle of it he wildly digressed about backgammon and parchesi - assuming that we would all know how to play so that we could compute the probabilities of winning in certain circumstances. Tell me again, how is that related to statistics for the behavioural sciences????

We needed group therapy and several pints before any of us could form coherent sentences.

The problem is that he is a nice, kind, nerdy and pleasant man... and I'm certain a talented reseracher. It's just that, like many profs, he SUCKS as a teacher, but moreso. This is beyond sucking. This is major Hooverism. I worked for half an hour on a question (oh, the exam was worth 170 marks and he did half marks) when I noticed that he had not reported the data in cumulative percentages (as was indicated in the question itself). At that point I seriously wondered what would happen if I just started crying, sobbing and got up and left the room.

Would he even get the idea? I doubted it and held back the hypothetical tears. Fantasies of traumatizing the man still linger. Maybe another day... maybe another day.

I still have to write two more assignments, another exam and a minor paper for Professor Oblivious.

Wish me luck.
How dare ANYONE threaten my love of numbers???