TA, no more

I’m hanging up my TA hat and hopefully not using it every again. Being a TA was nice and all, but I don’t think I want to do any more for a few reasons:

  1. There aren’t any design classes I can TA for and that’s what I’d rather do.
  2. I’ve TAed a few times now, and although the money is nice (three-times nicer when you’re a grad student), my resume is beginning to be clogged up with too many academic positions and I decided a long time ago I would never do a phd.
  3. I enjoy teaching my kid’s Karate a lot more than I enjoy teaching school stuff. And if I don’t TA than that means I have more time for my Karate kids.
  4. TA-ing is stressful sometimes.

Anyhow, marking the final exam was kind of fun. I got, what I think, was the easier portion of the exam to mark this time around. Here are some sample answers I got for one of the questions on the exam that asked the students to explain the contributions made by Ian McHarg to GIS that made me laugh:

  • He was a digitizing monkey
  • He surfs in Hawaii and pretends to work
  • His house is made of points, lines and polygons
  • McHarg showed us all that a little perseverance and hard work can let us achieve our dreams. .... Thank you Ian McHarg for contributing so much to the world of GIS

I wrote this on 13 December 06 when I was feeling .

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