Recording Lectures is (not) my Passion
Last week, I got an email from the prof whose course I'm TA'ing this term:
Would you be able to record your C0 tutorial, rather than having us run it in class? Most of them can happen in class, but I don't think we can spare the entire class time unfortunately.
In the same week, I also got an email asking me if I would be okay with running a few orientation sessions for incoming TAs in the department. With that, my winter break came to an end.
Recording lectures
I currently TA for CPSC 310, which is our department's third-year software engineering course (and the last required software engineering course for majors). I'm usually tasked with running a tutorial on TypeScript (lingua franca of 310) in the first week of class. Since UBC extended our winter break by exactly a week, it does make sense that we no longer have time to have an in-lecture tutorial.
Luckily, I had the slides I used from last term backed up, so it was just a matter of recording myself talking. I, of course, speak perfectly in front of a camera and was able to record the entire tutorial in a single take. This is, of course, categorically false. Not only was there the problem of me incessantly messing up my lines, especially toward the end of a section when everything went well, there was also the fact that I had to record myself programming.
This is something that was insanely frustrating. One workaround that I thought of was just starting out with a program all written out, then deleting parts of it line by line, and then reversing the video (tada! No mistakes). Unfortunately this didn't work so well; it proved to be quite difficult to synchronize my words with the code being deleted (written), and I just ended up shooting take after take after take
who knew that becoming a social media influencer was so much work. You can view the completed video on YouTube, but you'd better hurry; I expect that Raid Shadow Legends and NordVPN will be clambering to sponsor me and I'm gonna have to run ads.
TA Training
Our department usually runs a series of training sessions for new TAs, and this year was no exception. The only interesting part was that everything was now online and I had to practice my zoom oration skills. Speaking to an audience is still something I have trouble with, even after I've TA'ed now for 15 terms (which I also found out to be a record in the department.... yay?). I still get a wave of anxiety in the days and hours leading up to a presentation. I think most people can tell how nervous I am during a presentation when I make jokes that don't quite stick the landing, or emit a burst of nervous laughter. I'm not really much of a "new years resolution" person, but getting better at public speaking, or learning how to better manage my anxiety that's related to public speaking is something I'ld like to work on this year.
Grad School Term 2: Electric Boogaloo
This term I'm currently registered in the following courses
- CPSC 539S: Program Verification, Alex Summers
- CPSC 508: Operating Systems, Margo Seltzer
- CPSC 532W: Probabilistic Programming, Frank Wood
I've left out my directed studies with my advisor since I've yet to officially register. I'm incredibly excited for the program verifiers course; there was an email sent out that specified that the course will be heavy on programming, and that it would require us to program in Scala. At this point I'm not sure if I actually enjoy programming in general or if I just enjoy programming in Scala. I'm not going to think about it too much.
CPSC 521 (Parallel Computation) was cancelled so I've replaced it with 508. Low-level programming isn't something I'm particularly passionate about (I get a cold sweat whenever I see a * and a & or God forbid a **), but the concept of operating systems sounds fun. 532W is something that I'll likely drop, since I don't believe I have the necessary background in machine learning/Bayesian statistics that it implicitly appears to require. That said, I'll wait and see how the first week goes.
That's it for now, I'll see you next week!