"welcome to the calc recitation after-party"

yes... i am guilty of saying those exact words earlier this afternoon... oi.

so i teach from 8:55-9:50, 10:35-11:30, and 12:15-1:10 every wednesday. i generally have people stay after and ask questions after each section, so that's not a problem. moreover, i have to get to my 2nd and 3rd sections on time, so there's an upper bound on how long i stay in the room during my 1st two sections.

section 3 though, is another story. every week, people finish their quiz, and turn in their homework, then minimum two, max a dozen, students from that class like to stay after and ask me about the harder homework questions that i don't have time to get to during class.

since i don't have a "next section" to get to, i'm generally pretty flexible about staying as long as they need me.

however, "as long as they need me" periodically turns into "until we get kicked out". given the next class has about 5-6 student and a teacher, and i have 35 students to get out of the room, so they're fairly patient. but often, the other teacher (who is an actual professor, not just a TA) sticks her head in and politely hints for me to give her her room.

today that happened while i still had 6 students attached to me with 2 problems they all wanted solutions to.

so, since all rooms on the hallway were taken, we camped out in a large circle on the floor next to the vending machines at the end of the hall. for another 45 minutes, i coached them through problems as a group, with me just writing on scratch paper in the middle of the circle. it was actually kinda fun.

(and the sad thing is -- if you know me, you can probably actually picture me sprawled out on the floor of a hallway, excitedly explaining how to sketch a function to an audience of half a dozen students... oi :P)

but really -- how often do you have a math class "after party" with like 20% of the class still hanging out with the teacher wanting to know more. i love my students, but it takes a lot of energy to get through 4-5 hours of talking math straight to 100ish students... or in the case of today, more like 6 hours straight.

i'm glad they want to learn and ask questions as we go rather than snowballing and freaking out the day before the test... but man... calc after party... go figure.

3pm... *finally* time for lunch.

later dudes.