my day

up again at 6:45, out the door by 8:10 to help teach at 8:40

when i arrived at the computer lab classroom on campus at 8:30, aek, another calc 3 TA was already there...apparently mike, the TA who was out of the country and i was replacing, had asked aek to help cover, oblivious that he hadn't told dr. g. (the prof who asked me to cover)... so dr. g. was pleasantly surprised to find *both* me and aek there to help, and between the two of us we covered mike's 3 sections of calc 3.

as i was finishing with the last group, dr. g. was helping alex, his other TA, in the next room over. dr. g. came back to me complaining that he was going to kill alex -- alex hadn't made copies of the lab for his students or worked through the lab, so he had no idea how to help them, and dr. g. was doing all the work. i offered to stay and help so that dr. g. wouldn't have the urge to kill his TA, and after i ran to the student center for a 10 minute lunch, i came back and stayed with alex in the lab until 5. by the 3rd of his three sections, he was mostly able to answer questions on his own, but he still called me for help periodically too...

SO, that amounts to 5 hours teaching my own 3 sections of students yesterday and 8.5 hours of teaching mike and alex's sections (with help from aek in the morning and alex in the afternoon) today.

realize though, my assignment was only to teach yesterday, and at dr. g.'s request, i agreed to 8:40-1:20 today... the staying for alex's sections was decided on the spot this afternoon when dr. g. seemed especially distressed with alex and desperate for help.

at 5pm, as i was bundling up to head out into nasty weather again, alex commented to me "man that was a long day!", to which i replied "dude, none of that, you were here for half of it", and he agreed "i guess it was longer for you"... um yeah... 8.5 consecutive hours of teaching *is* awhile... i enjoyed it, but i'm EXHAUSTED.

dr. g., a man of grand sarcasm and few words, wrote me the following email this afternoon:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I think your presence and help and good humor contributed materially to
any success that the Maple labs had today.

Thank you very much.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

for dr. g. to be completely serious and sincere for more than one sentence in an email is a HUGE compliment from him.

so, after teaching 9 sections of calc 3 in 2 days, i'm totally ready to crash, but dr. g. can't be anything but nice to me from now on, so i've gotten something out of it too. :)

so, if you're a rutgers calc 3 student this semester, there's a SIXTY percent chance you've had to put up with me for at least an hour already this semester and it's only the 2nd day of classes... how scary is that?!

time to crash.

later dudes.