Eek! Your TA Got A “B” In This Course Three Years Ago, Is Just As Lost As You Are

In recent days, shocking and devastating events took place in the TA hours for INTRO 101: Concepts of Introduction. Events that left Glow assignments in shambles, career aspirations derailed, and senses of self-worth crushed like a bug beneath a shoe. Haybale reporters took to the streets to get to the bottom of this all-too-precedented tragedy.

The TA on duty for INTRO 101, Peda Godgy ’26, is described by her friends as an intellectually robust, academically sound student. Godgy ought to have been, many would say, well-equipped to serve as a TA to INTRO 101, a core course in her major curriculum, the foundation on which her 300-levels, her senior seminars, her very thesis stand.

Many would say.

Local freshman, Tri Harde ’29, a regular attendee of TA hours, entered that dark, dank, depressing Wachenheim classroom with only pep in her step and hope in her heart. As she worked through her practice exam, she encountered a point of confusion and, fatefully, raised her hand.

Godgy, witnesses report, approached Harde with confidence: shoulders squared, head held high, a slight smile on her lips, to indicate that she’s really just a student like all of you, despite her clear wisdom and authority.

“Hey,” said Harde, “so, I’m just kinda confused on how to approach Problem 7. Like, I get what L-sub-H is, but not H-sub-L, or H-sub-M, or H-sub-N or sub-O or sub-P, either.”

Godgy nodded sagely, flicking anxiously – yet with convincing nonchalance – through her answer key.

“Totally. Yeah, for sure.” But it was not ‘for sure,’ not at all – this stuff was as gibberish to her as it was to Harde, an echo of a memory of a long-ago dream, and Problem 7 was nowhere to be found.

Godgy, with the expertise of a smooth-talking master criminal, bought herself time: “Why don’t you try drawing out on the board for me what your approach has been so far?”

But Harde wrote only: “H-sub-L, question mark?”

“I just don’t get how H-sub-L is different from H-sub-M,” said Harde.

Godgy scanned the room frantically for another raised hand, any raised hand.

“So, think of it this way. What would you say H-sub-L represents in comparison to H-sub-M?” asked Godgy in the tone of an experienced practitioner of Socratic questioning. However, as witnesses later suggested to reporters from the Haybale, she was genuinely and seriously asking.

Harde responded only with a disheartened: “Uhhhh.”

“Let me put it another way. We’ve got H-sub-L and H-sub-M. What would you say is the distinction between the two?” asked Godgy, a single drop of sweat dripping down her brow. 

A single tear fell down Harde’s cheek in perfect narrative symmetry.

“Okay, okay, maybe this will help. If H-sub-L is an apple, and Problem 7 is an orange, would you say H-sub-M is more of a watermelon or a tangerine?”

Sniffling, shaking her head, watching her career aspirations disappear before her very eyes, Harde replied, “Um… a tangerine?”

“Okay, so,” said Godgy, surreptitiously eyeing the door, “if you take a look at page 437, that might give you a clue to help you work this one out.”

Harde flipped page after page after page – there was no page 437. She began to weep.

“Um, wait, I’m sorry, where is –” asked Harde, but by the time she had turned her head, Godgy was already halfway out the door, leaving behind a dust trail and the sound of a yowling cat, Wile E. Coyote style.

Godgy fled the scene for the safety of a single-stall gender-neutral Wachenheim bathroom, wiping the metaphorical and literal sweat from her brow at the lucky escape.

As Godgy later reported to the Haybale, “Guys, be serious. You literally never use any of this stuff ever again, in a single class past 101. It’s completely moot by the time you’ve taken INTRO 102, not to mention INTRO 201. Besides, I took this class freshman fall, man, and I was doing a lot of poppers back then. I think the neurons I stored all this stuff in are actually just dead now.”

Devastatingly, while sitting the real exam the following day, Tri Harde was at a loss for how to approach a problem much like Problem 7, a problem worth an entire 0.5% of her exam grade, and was faced with a catastrophic personal crisis upon realizing she would receive only partial credit for this problem. A failure so ruinous it would likely leave her without career prospects, romantic prospects, or a reason to live.

Meanwhile, having completed a week’s arduous labor totalling almost one and half entire hours, Peda Godgy trudged home, logged ten hours on Workday, and slept soft and sound as a baby, dreaming of H-sub-L and H-sub-M and what they could possibly mean until she woke the next morning just in time for her 8:30 senior seminar, INTRO 420: Advanced Concepts of Course.