Reflection Paper: A Career As A Teaching Assistant

Being a T.A. without a doubt has been one of my favorite experiences as a communication studies major. If I remember correctly some of the goals I had for being a T.A. were to gain a better understanding of the communication process and to also learn more about what goes into teaching a communication studies class. Based on my time as a teaching assistant I would say I definitely have gained a much more firm grasp on understanding the communication process. However, I think one of my greatest benefits was seeing how much work goes into a professor teaching multiple classes. Professor Ingram had 4 classes and after grading papers on a consistant basis you realize very easily that as a professor time clearly gets taken up quite a bit. When …show more content…
After a week I insisted that I could handle attending another class during the week so I made the decision to attend the Interviewing class on Monday’s and Friday’s as well. Another skill I used quite often which I never assumed I would use in this role was researching skills. I never anticipated that research would come into play for a role as a teaching assistant however I was wrong about this assumption. Research was something I consistently did in both the Interviewing and CMN1390 class. For both classes I consistently searched for important information to tie lessons together to make them relatable or interesting. At times for the interviewing class this involved searching for proper examples of successful or unsuccessful interview to analyze as a class. Of course the final obvious skill has to be communication skills. Many times students eventually through some form of assumption decided that I was essentially the gatekeeper between them and the professor. So many times students would ask me questions regarding assignments before they would go to Professor Ingram. This means I needed proper communication skills to relay accurate information between Professor Ingram and the