Professor Accessibility, TA's, and Relationships

Mikalye
Fri, 11 Dec 2009 07:09:02 +0000

How are the english skills of the TAs?



You might just as well ask about the English skills of the faculty. I attempted one term to take a class taught by a visiting professor from the University of Beijing. He was totally incomprehensible, although brilliant, and I decided to the class the following term with a different Professor.

Any time you have a population the size of MIT’s you will have an assortment of saints and sinners, of professors who care deeply about their undergraduates and those who do not. I was very friendly with several of the faculty. One in particular invited me to his house for Thanksgiving dinner one year when I could not return home. He was a very good if not exceptional teacher, but he was a wonderful human being. One of the finest teachers I had at MIT did not care much about undergraduate teaching. He had to do it, so he did it, and coincidentally he was totally brilliant at it, but clearly it was something that did not enthuse him. It takes all types.