Experiencing the role of a TA

Being a post graduate student, I am entitled to do TA (Teaching Assistant) job apart from my thesis work. Many a times, students feel that TA job adds extra work load and creates hindrance in thesis work. I completely disagree with this statement. I have been TA-ing from last two semesters and let me tell you, this job gives me a lot of knowledge in terms of both technical and presentational skills.

During my third and fourth semester, I assist my supervisor with two subjects namely, Operating System and Database Management Systems for MCA. Although I have studied both of these subjects during my undergraduate course, so this was not a big deal for me to handle the classes and the labs. I am sure you can differentiate between the study of a private college and a deemed university. I haven’t learned anything practical in both these subjects from my past college. And I was very excited to challenge myself with these subjects.

The very first day, when I was to take my first lab of OS, I was very excited. I have this thing in my mind that, might be I could fail somewhere in explaining the concepts but I was more concerned about my learning rather that the students. It hardly takes one or two labs for me to learn how to handle students queries. Gradually, I and the students created an environment of learning where there is no teacher – no student, only a group whose aim is to cement the concepts and to make ourself confident in the respective subjects. During this period of time, most of the students asked me to change the structure of lab. They wanted some kind of project work instead of having few programs as assignments. As lots of time had already gone and we are not left with any time to do projects. So I requested them to continue with assignments this time and if, in the next semester, we got chance to work together, we surely will do projects.

And finally in my fourth semester my supervisor asked me to take the DBMS lab for the same students of MCA. Till now, we were all friends. But I always kept a line distance between us so that the respect for a teacher and a student does not dissolve. During this lab time, I along with my supervisor decided to give away the projects to students. I requested the supervisor to experiment the hybrid methodology of development rather than waterfall model or iterative model. He agreed and we started implementing the process model, which I was working on.

The overall session of being a TA was very good. Instead of affecting my thesis work, this job helped me for the implementation of my work. Both of these subjects are also important from the point of job placement. The aim of getting a good job in my dream company also encourages me to do hard work. I would suggest every computer science student to assist as TA for at least one subject during his course period. You will enjoy every bit of this experience and most importantly if you could develop a healthy relationship with the students, you will get many good lifetime friends.

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