fast pace

Dear friends, I have become very behind on my news, as with many things already!

Last week Thursday I had a tough experience with the class that I "teach". I'm a teaching assistant, a.k.a. TA. This is what we'd call a tutor in SA. During the tutorial I passed on a message to the class (which was basically from the lecturer) that the students were please to sign out (indicating the time) when they left and that if they left early I was not obliged to help them. Of course by this threat, I did not mean that I would never help them, but rather that I was not obliged to make time outside of tutorial to help them with that particular tutorial. If the students knew me they would have realised that it is unlikely that I would carry out this threat. At the same time, I don't think it seems that unreasonable, considering that I'm a busy student too and that the tutorial is an allocated time for us to work together.

At least 2 students were really upset with me, interpreting my statement in the worst possible way. I had one student confront me directly (and angrily) about his rights to be helped, and another student basically stormed out. This was all very surprising because I don't think South African students would have responded this way. Perhaps we're used to putting up with crap (or should I say we expect less). Perhaps it was a cultural thing, and probably I did not express myself very well. I apologised to the irate student and sent an email to the class afterwards apologising and explaning my intentions and responsibilities. Nevertheless I was very upset by this experience - you know how I hate conflict! The lecturer did not help by being over-concerned and supportive the next day which made me believe that the situation was perhaps even worse than I thought it was. Fortunately, it seems that the class (or most of them) has long moved on and I'm happy to say that so have I.

Did I learn something? Perhaps yes.

1. Treat the class with respect and treat them like they are good students.
2. Taking the role of TA seriously.
3. Dealing with conflict maturely and being able to apologise will probably help the conflict situation. If not, the other person is not dealing with it maturely and that is not my fault/responsibility.
4. It is my responsibility how I chose to let the conflict impact on me. After a few days of agonising I could see this fact - but it's hard to see this when you're in the heat of the emotion!

This stress/anxiety combined with a huge assignment for Friday which kept me up very late meant that I took several days to catch up sleep (i don't think I ever did), relax and refocus - meaning I lost a lot of work time too! Every week I have two huge assignments due which keep me working around the clock. I also have to prepare and attend tutorials, and do some additional work for my supervisors.

I'm finding the assignments for the one course (Exploratory Spatial Data Analysis) very difficult. In fact the whole course is tough and I must admit I'm starting to feel daunted. I wonder if it's just the fact that I haven't done maths/stats for 5 years, or if I'm slow, or if the lecturer really expects a lot. You see I'm the only one in the class so it's hard to have a balanced perspective on this!

Fortunately there have been some fun times too though. My dear flatmates, Bianca and Yi, took me ice-skating on the Friday after my fateful tutorial to help me unwind. I think I've only skated twice in my life, once a few years ago, so it was really exciting and pretty scary at times. I fell 3 times. Yi, who is pro-skater, was taught how to skate in the grueling Chinese tradition. As a child she was forced to skate outside in freezing cold winter on a frozen lake. If she did not skate her mother threatened not to feed her! ;) The children fell many times and had many bruises, but there was no relinquishment- not even tears would help!

Yi, kept me motivated and kept a strict eye on my technique: "Bend forward, More! Bend your knees! More!" . "If your back doesn't hurt you're not bending forward enough!". This certainly was challenging as the more forward you bend the more compelled you are to skate faster so that you don't fall over. And I'm afraid of going fast! But apparently falling forward is much better than falling backward. And by shifting your weight forward you are far less likely to fall.

I think her lessons paid off though because I went again tonight and I was much better.

Last weekend I also organised a dinner party at my flat. It was so much fun, the food was good and we played fun games until late. I've attached a few photos here. On the left is me, cooking. Middle left photo is Bianca, Martin (both from Germany), me and Yi (in front). Next to that is Bob, Bianca, Martin and Yi. The bottom left photo shows Martin and Bianca and next to that, is Sina (Iran) and myself. Bob, Martin, Sina and myself are all Geomatics students.