TA Era

Being a TA was perhaps one of the more interesting and enjoyable adventures of the last 6 months. I had to grade presentations and essays written for the Chinese Culture class by international students of Shanghai Jiao Tong University / 上海交通大学, and assist my two lovely friends, Ari and Niamh, during their classes. While I have my arguments regarding the course's weird influence on academic performance, as I think it is perhaps good to have it in the schedule, but with no direct or indirect impact on the final GPA of the students, I think the course has a positive reasoning at its core: to make the international students more familiar with the country they are living in now, and an opportunity to meet people with similar interest in the country. I consider the professor of the course, Flair, to be one of the few scholars I have met here who has a great understanding of Chinese pop culture and cares about Chinese literature and cinema. Even though we occasionally have our own…