Injustice in EC 5: A tale of two TA’s

From 12:00 to 1:15 PM on Tuesdays and Thursdays, the hottest topic on campus is  “Principles of Economics,” the largest class at Tufts.

Yaks topical to the content of the lecture are common. Whenever Professor and former Wall Street worker Nancy Kimelman drops fire (fascinating comments) or savagery (clever, blunt statements that tend to be scathing in nature), the entire school hears word.

The class, commonly labeled by the notable Student Information Service label (EC 5), is considered to be fairly dry by the student community. It’s one of those annoying weed-out classes, engineered to ensure students are dedicated to pursuing the popular major.

The class isn’t bullshit. EC 5 is a prerequisite for essentially every other course in the Economics Department, and it is important for students to understand what’s taught in the course. The lectures are informative, and if you study enough, success is possible. However, even though EC 5 is such an important course, there’s a significant problem in how it assesses students’ knowledge.

The lectures can be helpful, but there a major problem with the course through differences in individual instruction. Since the class is so large, the class has several recitation sections for smaller discussion. There are six different teaching assistants that cover these sections, and understandably, because the TAs are all different people, there are differences in the recitations.

However, these differences are too large at the moment.

I’m lucky that my weird recitation time of 7:30 PM on Monday nights has a great TA. She genuinely seems to care about student success, answers questions clearly, and attempts to engage the section. To prepare for the latest exam, my TA gave her sections two practice exams to help study, and these exams were very helpful to work with in addition to reviewing class notes and homework. The exam had questions similar to those on the exam and I was able to do well.

Unfortunately, not every recitation received these practice materials. My close friend and hall-mate wasn’t distributed the materials because his TA couldn’t make the last recitation before the exam.

Another good friend of mine in another recitation attended the meeting before the exam and didn’t receive exams either. These students were at a huge disadvantage in doing well on the exam compared to the lucky ones. (The test grades still haven’t been released. I only know that my recitation had an average of 86 on the quiz.)

One of the problems covered in the exam wasn’t covered in lecture or the textbook, but was covered through recitations and the practice exams. These differences in student preparation are a huge discrepancy that should not be tolerated at a university. Jumbo faculty is better than this.

Not all TA’s do their important job for the sake of fulfilling it, and this is apparent through the differences in the quality of recitations under certain TAs. It is unreasonable to expect all TA’s to be equally brilliant, but it is reasonable for each TA to be expected to follow an equal agenda and to care enough about their students’ success for them to put significant effort towards the job.

The only joke of EC 5 should be through Nancy’s uncommon and notable fire comments. It should not be through the administration of this course.

If every student is required to take the same course, they should expect to be taught in the same way.