TA Job

Sometimes I wish I'd bought the book for the class I'm TA'ing. It's fairly basic material about oceanography that I already know, and I have the answer key, but the students in the class come up with some off-the-wall answers, and I should really know where they're getting them for the purposes of evaluating partial credit. Once in a while the answers are even plausible, just not the same as what I know or what's on the answer key, and I wonder if I might be taking off for something that's actually correct. Eh, but I probably don't wonder enough to shell out the money. The peace of mind that comes with a clear conscience is worth nowhere near 70 bucks.

I would complain about the department expecting me to furnish my own book, but the TA job is pretty sweet. It's amazingly little work, especially given my sister's dire warnings of her experience in graduate school. Of course, biology departments do a huge amount of service teaching for other majors, so they work their graduate students like dogs supervising labs.