Dealing with terrible gsi? Advice/Experience?

singh2010
Sun, 11 Sep 2011 13:05:06 +0000

For my math, science, and engineering classes so far, I’ve had 6 AWESOME GSI’s, 2 very good GSI’s, 6 AWESOME professors, 3 good professors, and 1 horrible professor. I hate it when people say “physics GSI’s are always bad”, when that is obviously not true. You can say that some GSI’s are bad, but certainly not all. My 7A and 7B GSI’s are both in the “AWESOME” category. I can’t wait to be a GSI one day so I can try to emulate some of the amazing ones that I’ve had.

It makes sense that 8A GSI’s would be terrible though, since by taking that course, you are saying that you have no interest in learning real physics, and are just trying to get through the requirement. Why should the physics department reward uninterested students with quality GSI’s when they can have the better GSI’s teach the 7 series, which will produce students that may actually use the physics they learn in the future?