TA Era
Being a TA was perhaps one of the more interesting and enjoyable adventures of the last 6 months. I had to grade presentations and essays written for the Chinese Culture class by international students of Shanghai Jiao Tong University / 上海交通大学, and assist my two lovely friends, Ari and Niamh, during their classes. While I have my arguments regarding the course's weird influence on academic performance, as I think it is perhaps good to have it in the schedule, but with no direct or indirect impact on the final GPA of the students, I think the course has a positive reasoning at its core: to make the international students more familiar with the country they are living in now, and an opportunity to meet people with similar interest in the country.
I consider the professor of the course, Flair, to be one of the few scholars I have met here who has a great understanding of Chinese pop culture and cares about Chinese literature and cinema. Even though we occasionally have our own disagreements (a reason to believe I am not giving positive comments because he is paying me lol), I truly appreciate his comments, and I am very glad he gave me this opportunity.
As for the students, I love talking to people about Chinese cinema and literature, so obviously, reading some of the essays and watching presentations was a blessing. While I am still afraid of how acceptable it is becoming to use AI to write or make a PPT, I believe there is a huge gap between "human talent and knowledge" and a machine's thinking process. During the program, it was kinda obvious who was relying heavily on AI and who cared about their craft. Hopefully, the robots stay in their lane, imitating Michael Jackson's dance and being "fun" rather than a post-apocalyptic future where we have to tolerate soulless AI-generated content everywhere.
Anyway, this was my yap about the last few months, and all-around, it was genuinely a nice experience being a TA.