The devil is in the details

OK, this is a bragging post. Cover your eyes if you don't want to see any commercials.

I was invited to hold a training session in the new graduate TA orientation in this coming September. I guess it was because of my "fine" work recognized by the department in the letter above. I am going to reveal all my secrets of how to constantly get 4.5+ student evals in the orientation.

I am going to open the discussion with the following story.

When we first got pregnant with Andrew, one of my friends told me, "man, it is so difficult with all those medical terms during the pregnancy. I didn't know what the doctor said at all. You'd better find a Chinese doctor." This came from an ABC(American born Chinese) with perfect command of English. That really scared me. So my wife and I bought some books and studied them pretty hard. Guess what? I understood everything the doctor had said to us. One of the nurses in the hospital even credited us with the best team ever.

So what is the trick for a non-native speaker to be an excellent TA? Preparation, preparation and preparation. Not too bad to open a training session, huh?

Vernon Smith on the invisible hand

Prof. Vernon Smith had an interview at EconTalk a while ago. He talked about his Nobel-winning work on experimental economics. His experience of sending his revolutionary work to JPE is very interesting to me. Back in the 60's, JPE was already famous for its stance on free market because it was, and still is, housed in the University of Chicago. Prof. Smith thought that his experimental economics could lend support to the invisible hand as empiric evidence. So he sent the paper to JPE. To his dismay, it got rejected!

It turned out that, "If you believe in markets you don't necessarily need evidence." Of course, it eventually got published by JPE when Harry Johnson took over as the editor. It is always good to know where people stand ideologically, but don't try to reason with them when you know they are firm believers of something.

(Picture: George Mason University)

The hollow teachers

Since I am gonna become a professor and teach some day, I have started to notice different types of teaching. Recently, I observed one particular type of instructors and was amazed by such teachers. Let's call them the hollow teachers. Here are some bullet points from my observation.

(1)The hollow teachers love to talk about their own experiences
---because they are not familiar with the material they are supposed to teach.

(2)The hollow teachers enjoy telling how old they are
---they think seniority buys them some credibility.

(3)The hollow teachers chat a lot with students
---they can cut the teaching time to a minimal level that way.

(4)The hollow teachers tend to spice things up in their wordings
---without knowledge of the material, they think cursing will excite students a bit.

(5)The hollow teachers are not demanding at all
---they worry a rigorous syllabus might backfire.

(6)The hollow teachers give students long breaks in between lectures
---again, they can have less teaching to do.

(7)The hollow teachers are popular among some students
---those hollow and lazy ones.

(8)The hollow teachers make mistakes in teaching frequently
---what do you expect from them?

(9)The hollow teachers often make assertive statements
---most likely because they don't know how to argue reasonably.

(10)The hollow teachers don't like transparency in grading policy
---they need lots of room to maneuver once things turn sour.

(11)The hollow teachers watch the clock regularly
---they wish they could go home right away!

(Picture: cartoonstock.com)