Where do Harvard undergraduates go when they have already reached the head of the class?

For undergraduate TFs in many science classes, the answer is: to the blackboard.

In fact, many science concentrators gaze to front of their section only to discover an undergraduate Teaching Fellow wielding the chalk: someone not much older--maybe even younger--than themselves.

Although at Harvard undergraduate TFs are common in the sciences, and especially in computer science, the experience of undergraduate TFs is very different from that of their graduate student colleagues.

"It's strange when you're talking with someone and they say: 'Oh where are you going?' and you say: 'Well, I'm going to teach a section now,'" says Sam A. Yagan '99, a Kirkland House resident, a TF for Computer Science (CS) 50: "Introduction to Computer Science" last semester and CS-51 this semester.

Other undergraduate TFs also found aspects of their teaching experience weird.

"What's strange is that all of the sudden all of these people in your section suddenly believe that you know what you're talking about," says Michael Walfish '98, who also taught CS-50 last semester.

With friends in their classes, some of the undergraduate TFs interviewed admit that teaching has delicate moments. "A lot of the people in your class are your friends so you have to play out two roles with them," says Bridget J. Frey '98, who worked as a TF for CS-50 last semester.

Matthew S. Caywood '98, a current CS-51 TF, says that a particularly strange situation for TFs can crop up in computer science, where it is not unheard of for undergraduate TFs to teach each other in different classes because 100-level courses do not have to be taken in any particular order.

However, Timothy K. Mueller '98, who worked as a TF for Chemistry 10: "Foundations of Chemistry" this year, says his experience as an undergraduate TF was not as bizarre as he had anticipated.

"It wasn't as strange as you thought it would be...just things you would expect to be strange like teaching people who are older than you or running across your students socially," he says.

Although most undergraduate TFs interviewed say that their jobs are sometimes disorienting, all are adamant that their youth in no way affects the quality of their teaching, and maintain that they do gain the respect of their students.

Mueller, who taught mostly first-years in his Chemistry 10 section, says he found them even more respectful than the children to whom he had taught science in a summer program.

While Walfish says he noticed less of a barrier between his students and him, he says that such a situation was not necessarily negative.

"When [other undergraduates are] in your section and you're at the front of the room answering questions, I think they're going to naturally trust you," Walfish says.