The TA Chronicles: Being volunteered as tribute
Coming to terms with my TA assignment
There exists a poignant event in the career of all PhD students that truly tests their mettle… Come to think of it, there are actually many of these – but there’s one in particular that fills me with a little extra anxiety. I’m talking about none other than the dreaded teaching assistant (TA) assignment. Depending […]
How NOT to be a good TA
Lessons from a first year of graduate student TA
It was my first ever trip to Cambridge and to the MIT campus and, more importantly, the start of my graduate program in the chemistry department. My fall semester schedule was a balance of courses, lab rotations and my teaching assignment. Needless to say, it was a lot to juggle. I felt confident that the […]
Crafting is engineering, music is math
What I learned from teaching design and engineering to elementary schoolers
I am a serial maker: as a child, I dove deep into a new creative obsession each year. With each medium I explored, my passion for making grew, and projects flooded my house: a giant model of the Parthenon made from recyclables graced our front hallway, a crochet stuffed dragon perched in our kitchen, and […]
Pandemic pupils
How Covid-19 has transformed my perspective on outreach and education
Going to graduate school anywhere can be a form of culture shock. Often, the transition is from cosmopolitan to erudite and razor-focused, or team-based and casual to more isolated. But moving to do graduate school in a northeastern city in the U.S. from somewhere more rural, such as southwestern Virginia (where I came from), can […]
Between three worlds
There are more things in science and engineering, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your departmental curricula
“So are you an aerospace engineer or a mathematician?” asked my interviewer. I grinned. I was applying for a job in an applied math department, and with two degrees (bachelor’s and master’s) in aerospace engineering, I was expecting some form of this question. “I’m a computational engineer,” I replied. What’s a computational engineer? You might […]
