Bright Young Things

Zhao, also a Crimson editor, says she really enjoys helping students struggle through the course's difficult material, though she admits teaching it has been a challenge.

"When TFing, especially at a place like Harvard, you always get one or two kids in your section who are very bright and try to outdo you."

This can be especially problematic when students are teaching peers who are only slightly younger, and quite possibly even older, than they themselves are.

Amos B. Blackman `01, a CS concentrator who has been TFing departmental courses since his sophomore year, says that he has occasionally received these complaints.

"I have had a few students complain to me personally that they 'couldn't believe they're being taught by someone younger than them, it's offensive and ridiculous,' and I always calmly reply, 'What's wrong with their teaching?' They can never answer that question," he says.

While in the humanities, such a scenario would likely be disastrous, Gortler says he thinks it is a formula which works in the sciences.

"Perhaps because there's less of an element of subjectivity, there perhaps isn't as much of a need to have a difference in ages for students to respect their teaching fellows."

Living in the Terminal Room

Even trickier than the task of teaching overachieving peers about computational complexity or multivariable calculus is the challenge TFs face of balancing teaching responsibilities with other academic and extracurricular obligations.

While most TFing positions require only between 10 and 20 hours of commitment a week, some students find themselves giving considerably more.

David D. Eggli `03, a CS51 teaching fellow, says officially TFing the course is only supposed to require about 50 hours per month.

"Truth be told, it's generally closer to 50 a week," he says.

In addition to time spent grading problem sets, which he says take about an hour each, every week he is responsible for preparing for and teaching an hour-long section, attending a weekly TFing meeting, attending three hours of lecture, responding to a deluge of student e-mails, and holding two office hours in the basement of the Science Center helping students debug their programs.

In reality, though, he says he often spends 15 or 20 hours on this last task, simply because so many students are in need of help.