Why I TAed 15-150 10 Times

Why did you TA for 15-150 10 times?

It's a good question, one I've been trying to answer myself as I approach the end of my 10th semester (or perhaps 11th if you count the time I taught the course). Whenever I ask tough questions like this in recitation (and am met with a sea of blank stares instead of an answer), I like to break them down into smaller, digestible parts until I reach a version that gets a response. So, let's do the same thing here.

Why did you TA?

I initially applied to TA to give myself something to do over the summer after freshman year. I had no idea what I was getting myself into – all I knew was that it was something that CMU students did, and so I did it.

I could immediately feel the weight of responsibility when I started my first semester as a TA. I spent hours reviewing and preparing for my first lab because I wanted to make sure that I understood every word of what I was about to teach. The first time I felt brave enough to respond to a Piazza post, I kept drafting and redrafting my answer until I was confident in hitting the "Submit" button. I re-solved every single question on the homework before going into office hours.

A lot of what I did was driven by the fear of imperfection, of showing even a sliver of doubt to my students. However, I could see that this attention to detail was helping students feel seen and supported. So, I reframed my fear as empowerment – it's not that I have to do everything I can to help students, I get to do everything I can'to ensure my students succeed. This feeling of empowerment, of knowing that I was dedicating myself to fostering growth and learning in my students, was the fuel to my fire, and I made sure to keep the flame a live for every semester afterward.

Why did you TA for 15-150?

Going into CMU, I didn't feel confident in my ability to code. I was introduced to it a handful of times in high school, but it never felt like it stuck. When I started my first year, I felt ashamed at the lack of experience I had compared to my cohort. Eventually, it was the second semester of freshman year, and suddenly we were all taking "15-150: Principles of Functional Programming" together. The course content was completely new and unfamiliar, even for my classmates who had been coding ever since they had the dexterity to type on a keyboard. Although I entered CMU feeling disconnected from my peers, us all taking 15-150 at the same time was the great unifier that brought us together, and I finally started to get the hang of the whole "coding" thing. The choice to TA 15-150 then was easy – I wanted to be a part of this moment of connection for every new generation of Computer Science students.

Why did you TA for 15-150 10 times?

Finally, we've made it to the question I was trying to answer in the first place. This is the part where I take all of the answers for the previous subquestions and compose them into one big conclusion. The truth, however, is that I wrote this part before I wrote any of the previous sections, because I already knew what the answer would be: for fun. I TAed 15-150 10 times because it was fun (like the SML keyword!). It was fun to revisit the topics I loved by teaching them every week in lab. It was fun to chat with students, even (or perhaps especially) if it was to commiserate on difficult homework problems. It was fun to write exercises for lab handouts the day before they went live, to stay in Gates until 10:00pm grading a complicated proof question, and to race with my fellow TAs to be the first to respond on Piazza. The comradery, the community, the work – I kept returning to TA for semesters on end because I found every aspect of it fun.

I wanted this reflection to end with an answer that was more "deep" or meaningful, but I knew that if I tried to come up with anything along those lines it would be dishonest. The truth is that my answer is:

"Because I loved it. Because I had fun."