Now that we are over and done with the lecture I feel it was a great experience even if it only lasted a few minutes. Although I would have to admit I was very relieved when Dr. G first decided that we weren’t going to do the in-class lecture but in the end I am glad we did it. Lecturing is one of the biggest jobs of being a professor and how can one miss that experience while being a TA. It was very convenient having the slides mostly finished for us so we could focus on the actual presentation part of it. Although a PowerPoint can make or break a lecture I don’t feel like that is what we were supposed to get out of the experience. Like Gurung mentioned during one of our meetings we have to make powerpoints for class projects so we should know by now what makes a good powerpoint slide and what doesn’t.
Going into the lecture I was not nervous about the actual speaking aspect of it but more on how we were going to organize where we stood, microphones, introductions, and a lot of the smaller things. I think these sort of issues or components frightened me more because they were out of my hands where my lecture area was in my control. All in all I feel like I did pretty good for speaking in front of a group that large for the first time but I did of course notice a lot of small errors on my part. One thing that disappointed me was the last slide with biological preparedness. I knew was I was planning on saying but I noticed some of my notes weren’t on the final powerpoint so I assumed the things I wrote weren’t necessary. I should have double checked with Gurung before class to make sure I was meant to cover that slide. Sadly it was a stupid mistake on my part but thankfully Dr. G stepped right in and picked up where I left off. Other than that I felt like I did not have that many other issues. One thing I was extremely happy with was the student participation. It worked out just as I hope and people were very engaged and outspoken. One thing that took me a little off guard was when I was asking for people to give me examples of some phobias they had and one of the students sitting in the front said he was scared of apples. Shocked at first I curiously asked what about apples does he not like. When he said he did not like how people bite into them the class began laughing. I felt it was on my part to make not only him feel comfortable but also to make the class understand that it is small and different things in our daily lives that can be effected by phobias. I’m not sure if it was a smart choice on my part to ask him about his phobia but even though it was an awkward situation I tried to get the students attention away from it and onto what was important.
At the end of every TA lecture I felt they all did a good job! I definitely felt bad for Martha and the microphone problem. She did a wonderful job overcoming that obstacle and not allowing it to make her nervous or uncomfortable. Now that we are getting almost done with the semester it seems to be bitter-sweet. It’s going to feel great to have summer but I am going to miss the wonderful learning experience I had while being a TA.