You're coming off kind of contrived and pretentious, you're not saying anything we haven't heard before

Once again, it's time to share the highlights from my TA evaluations from last semester. As always, these are taken verbatim from the evaluations themselves.

Laboratory Activities
What was your favorite lab exercise? Why?
- The video, because it doesn't stink.
- Disection*, because it is dirty and exciting.
- Leaving, because it was always late.
- Ugh, none! Labs were just very boring.

Which lab experience was most informative and educational for you?
- Disection because I can do it and touching

What was your least favorite lab exercise? Why?
- Disections, because the stink.
- Anything w/ plants -- hella boring!
- Earthworm dissection and looking at live flat worms because both creep me out.

What is the major weakness of the [biology] lab?
- The only thing I didn't like was the detailedness of the quizzes.
- It's too hard (that's what she said?)

What is the major strength of the [biology] lab?
- Actual action take and tangible to all senses.
- [Minnow] is just a big bucket of win


Laboratory Instructor
In general, how would you rate your lab instructor as a teacher?
- A for awesome
- Damn, he's good (maybe because he's young?)
- Nothing special either way
- Kept me awake

How would you assess your lab instructor's ability in making things understandable and their willingness to help?
- A for always helping
- Godly

Assess your lab instructor's knowledge about the topics covered.
- A for abundance of knowledge
- He's a smartie-pants.
- Knew pretty much everything - I mean he is a doctor!!
- Again, he is a plethora of knowledge, or maybe even a cornacopia.
- Knew more than I knew, answered things

Assess your lab instructor's examination policy, fairness, and grading.
- B for Boy some of those quizzes are hard

What were his/her strong points?
- He got an attitude (in a nice way)

How could he/she improve?,
- Not allow and/or engage in so many loud and disruptive conversations that do not pertain to lab.
- He is at his MAX!
- Somehow make preservatives (for disections) smell like flowers or something.
- "insert mean statement"
- Not to blast the A/C when driving [on the field trip].
- Nothing that I can think of, even my best friend who joined our lab commented on your greatness ;)
- SMILE MORE!
- Maybe go the the gym a little
- talks too much, which wastes lab time
- Be more cool
- psst . . . make the quizzes easier









*Apparently I need to do a better job of teaching these students how to spell 'dissection'

You know that dying is fine but maybe I wouldn't like death if death were good

This week the students are dissecting starfish. I explained to them that the easiest way to do things was to forget the scalpel and just use scissors. Later, one of them drew this on the board:



Awesome! Poor Patrick Star doesn't even know what's coming.

In a later lab, a student was digging around in the bucket trying to get the last starfish out. Instead, he dropped the tongs into a bucketful of preservative and starfish juice. He didn't want to fish the tongs out because he said it was too gross. I told the rest of the class that it was close to Halloween anyway, so the rest of them were going to have to bob for starfish. Oddly enough, that didn't get the party started.