gratifying
December 17th, 2006 by Lawrence David
i’ve been meaning to post this photo for a couple of days now. it’s of a card my students gave me during our last office hours.
i must say, i don’t think there’s ever been a more touching spider-man thank you card. i’ve considered TA’ing 181 to easily be the most fulfilling thing i’ve done all semester; call me sappy, or even maple syrupy, but impacting the education of extraordinarily bright + motivated kids is hard to not find satisfying.
knowing that the students appreciated the work sonia and i did enough to self-organize and produce the card i’m holding, in spite of my tendency to obfuscate even the easiest concepts during recitation [heh, irony of using obfuscate] – that squares, and maybe even cubes, how rewarding this has all been.
in fact, i fear the class of biological engineers we taught was almost too fun, the material too interesting, and the overall experience too positive. dare i consider teaching an attractive profession? ::no, must struggle against inexorable gravity of academia’s black hole. must enter real world, get real job at some point ! ::
[then again, those MTA ads on the subways i used to see in high school, the ones about becoming a NYC public school teacher, they really resonated with me. especially the one that went, "can you remember the name of your mutual fund manager, your lawyer, or even the doctor who performed your last surgery? how about your first grade teacher?"]
sweet – i’ll def be in the city during the times you will
hehe – i felt that way only infrequently when i taught for kaplan – then again, teaching demanding, hypercompetetive premeds is a different banana (to borrow a phrase) than awesome, laid-back bioengineers (go BME!)
oops, forgot to insert “will-sell-my-mother,-father,-and-first-born-for-an-extra-point-on-verbal” premeds
nice – we’ll definitely http://desk.stinkpot.org:8080/blog/wp-gallery2.php?g2_itemId=90
when we get back!