Frances the nerdy stats TA

I'm pondering for a bit on how incredible this is: me actually teaching undergrads. I've heard from so many people that even if you teach well, you're not going to have many students like stats afterwards or even go on to take more. I asked my two sections (~100 people) why they were taking stats and the majority (~96%) said that it was a requirement (for psych, med skool, pharm skool, optometry, business, etc) They weren't really there voluntarily. And it just hit me: I was exactly one of those students back then!

I never gave much thought to stats, didn't bother to take AP stats in high school, and always tried to avoid having to take any at UCLA. Why did I even take my first stats class? It was REQUIRED! (Darn requirements! Now I'm stuck as a phd student in stats!) Anyhow, from my first stats course (winter 2002) to now is just a few years and I'm sorta passing on my knowledge (hopefully?) to people who never wanted to take stats in the first place. Maybe one of my future students will be doing what I'm doing now, but that's such a long shot. =)

Anyways, I have no idea how great or sucky I was in my first two sections ever! I didn't tell them that it was my first time! =)
I really did try to get them to talk though. I made them introduce themselves, read questions from the book, and answer them. Man, I still haven't realized the power that I have yet; I'm still just so worried about how I'm doing. My policy now is to never make them do anything that I wouldn't have want done to me as a student, i.e. no stupid icebreakers, no calling on people directly, no making fun of their answers, etc. Though I'm not sure whether making them read questions out loud from the textbook is considered too "high-schoolish", but I thought it best to not be yapping all the time and have them talk sometimes. And I always got a volunteer; they're thinking "someone better just raise their hand and appease the lame GSI or these stupid silences will just continue."

And of course, as a good GSI would do on the very first day: I let them out early. =)