Kiddies Teaching The Kiddies

When I was an undergrad, I was a TA for the sophomore organic chemistry labs for a few years. Of all the things I look fondly back on as an undergrad (a pretty short list), being an undergrad TA is near the top. As an undergrad, I was still in love with the subject and how much it made sense to me, and I loved helping other people learn it. Educationally, the way organic chemistry just clicked for me was a first: never had any subject made so much sense on the first attempt. I lived and breathed it after taking it as a freshman (I was an overacheiving prick in high school, too). I know there are lots of undergrads who, like me, have a particular fondness for sophomore o-chem. These people, among the crowds of premeds and wannabe biologists, are in the minority, but it's these people I'm addressing this to; the kind of undergrads who would regularly read (AND WRITE IN HINT HINT) this blog.

If you ever have the opportunity to teach as an undergraduate, DO IT. It's fun and not really that hard. I could extol the virtues of helping other people and educating the community and it takes a village to raise a child and all that bullshit, but such altruism is so... med school application. There are better reasons for you to do it. Here are but a few.

• Pre-meds. If you like chemistry, you probably don't like them. We all know the type- they're the ones who make up for their lack of intelligence with an ambition rivaling Caesar's. The ones who don't talk about anything other than tests, grades, med school, and how awesome they (think they) are- I especially feel for those who had to live in the dorms with these sycophantic, arrogant twits. If you ever pined to play Marcus Brutus for these types, step right up. You won't be able to get them all, but god willing, you'll be able to give a B, or maybe a C, to a few of them. If you do end up teaching a bunch of them, you might want to chip in and get one of Kyle's med bracelets. Also, teaching premeds will make you never want to go to a hospital ever again, even if you are dying of cancer. So there's that.


• Do you panic unnecessarily when anything bad happens in lab? Being a TA will help you calm down, because the labs are typically much safer than research labs and the stupid shit that students do 90% of the time, things that you might have done while taking lab, are laughable. Eventually you'll learn to be aloof about things that go wrong and able to calmly and quickly fix any problem that might come up. Here's an example. When I was a senior, I had two years of teaching behind me, and a few of my students decided to boil some ether in beakers on a hot plate. The ether ignited. Had this happened when I was a freshman, I would have screamed and ran in circles, but instead, I just ran and got a big beaker and smothered the flamin' beakers. Many of my students were surprised at how I didn't freak out when ZOMG THE HOOD WAS ON FIRE WTFBBQ!!!11oneone. It takes some time to develop the psychological callous that keeps you from freaking out, and it might take longer for some than others, but it's a trait you'll want if you go into research.


• Teaching forces you to learn everything. Feigning brilliance to your students is important to keep your image up, but you can't feign knowledge of the material. You have to know your shit, or you will be screwed. This is ultra-handy if you plan on taking the chem GRE or MCAT, as it keeps the material for the class you're teaching fresh in your head.


• Ego. Teaching as an undergradute is an amazing ego booster. I mean, teaching as a grad student is cool too, cause your students will automatically think you're Einstein until you manage to convince them otherwise. But undergrads teaching undergrads has an even bigger effect, since you're essentially their age. In that vein, teaching as an undergraduate is a more informal introduction to teaching, and if you end up going to grad school, you'll already know what to expect in terms of workload and responsibility. Some students will not appreciate their classes being taught by undergrads, but in general, the selection process for undergrad students to teach is much more rigorous than grad student admission, and undergrad TAs are usually quite successful when implemented accordingly.


• Fucking with your students. This is especially fun to do with pre-meds. As we all know, a million things can go wrong when performing an experiment, and most of them can be easily corrected or are completely inconsequential. In this grey area you can learn to have a little fun with your students. Solution turned yellow? Sorry, you fail. No precipitate? Start over (but I only have a half hour left!). You're on fire? Who isn't nowadays! Fucking around with your students also helps with their stress too, usually, because if, in this situation where EVERYTHING ISN'T WORKING AAGHHH, you can manage to joke about it, then that can really calm down the students' worries too. (if your student is on fire, consider putting him/her out before joking. First things first.)

But why are you listening to me? Just go out and do it! It looks awesome on a resume, too.