:: My Divided Soul ::

I try to be a down-to-earth, relaxed TA most of the time. I teach two sections of CS 100J this semester, the same class I TAed last semester. My job is to give the students a lab assignment for them to do as I and my consultants walk around and help them one-on-one.

Today, my first section finished at 2:15, with a few students hanging around to finish up their labs as usual. Around 2:25, as I was helping a student, a professor walks in and starts saying “this is the Chem E. tutorial…” I say, “Excuse me, but I hold CS 100J here now.” He proceeds to get an attitude and sniped back, “Well, it’s not on the reserve list!” I told him that I had been holding class here since the first week of class and that we’d have to talk to the operators of the lab. He continues his “it’s not on the schedule” “let’s go look at the schedule” statements in a not-so-pleasant voice.

Normally when dealing with other people who are heated, I can remain rather calm, I’d like to think. One of the big exceptions to this is when people are rude or disrespectful to me, particularly in a professional setting. I believe in a certain etiquette among professors, instructors, and even teaching assistants. When someone violates the respect I feel I should have, it makes me…displeased.

The way I see it, I am here trying to help my students and this professor has no right to jump in and interrupt me and presume to take over the room when I am not done yet, whether he is entitled to the room or not. I certainly informed him of this fact, telling him he was rude and disrespectful to not wait outside of the room until I was done and, if he had concerns about use of the room, to come and talk to me instead of walking to the front of the room and starting his lecture, particularly since he was early. I mean, if he knew anything about the makeup of his class, he would have noticed that none of these students in the room were his. When he said he was going to be having class at 2:30, I ended my conversation with him with, “Well, it is now only 2:26.”

In the end, it seems there was a mix up and my class in fact did not have the room reserved. I have since talked to the professor I work with (David Gries, awesome professor to TA for extraordinaire) about reserving the lab. However, the Chem E professor’s right to use the room was not the problem. It was the manner in which he approached the situation. If he had simply walked up to me and said, “Excuse me, but I think my class has this room reserved for this time period,” I would have responded that I think my class had it reserved, at which point we would have walked over to the schedule, noticed he was correct, and moved my class to another room. Not a big deal. He chose to get a defensive attitude from the beginning, disrespecting my students, my consultants, and me.

As could not be helped, I was a bit riled up after that encounter as I took my students downstairs to another lab. Many of them got to see my little “discussion” with the Chem E. professor. Before I started class, I said to my students, “Haven’t you always wanted to yell at a professor? That felt so good.” They laughed and I laughed, which was really the intention; I had no reason to be heated around them and make them uncomfortable during their section. I hope we have not destroyed Chem E.-CS relations, though…