Internship

For the 2021-2022 school year I worked as Danial Freedman's teacher's assistant every first period Monday and Tuesday. Being a TA required me to grade papers and organize the classroom. I found this to be quite enjoyable. Dan's classroom was chaotic and fun which was an environment that I really thrived in. 
Learning how to input grades for Dan's three physics classes was interesting in a way I did not expect. I learned the placement of people's names and how to grade effectively and efficiently. I slowly adapted to nicknames, no last names, and bad handwriting. Although I would never truly meet these learners I still found satisfaction in watching someone succeed on a test when they had done poorly in the past. One of the biggest changes I made in my life because of this was to always put my last name on work. It is barely any work for me but can be so helpful for a TA, especially if they are unable to read my first name.   
Halfway through the year, I learned that Dan had other TA's that were actually doing things, which surprised me. I found out that the little bit of organization, in the cabinet based on period and if it was put on Jupiter, was done by a fellow TA. This helped me gain respect for that other learner cause I knew how much effort was put in to keep it running smoothly. In the future, I always dedicated a bit more time to make sure everything was in the right place. Even though I never purposefully messed it up in the past, the understanding of the work put in made me more careful. 
One of my favorite parts about being in Dan's class was when I could observe how coding could be used as a learning tool for physics. I want to be a computer scientist so seeing this was a very tangible, real-world example of how coding can affect our lives. I wish this would have been implemented earlier cause I feel I would have been more involved in class and more excited to learn if I also got this opportunity. During these classes, I would sometimes play around with the system and see what I could learn.