u/Zealousideal_Rush252

So, I've recently joined an undergrad TA team as a soph to teach fundamental programming concepts as a CS class. The typical demographic is freshmen and novices who know no programming at all.

I had my first mini-class/tutorial with about 14 students yesterday, and like clockwork, I rushed like crazy even though I maintained to finish on time without consciously trying very hard to do so. I had delivery problems and I was not able to figure out how to prompt people to interact. A senior TA and the lecturer sat in to test me out, and they did give me some feedback but in a pretty harsh manner, almost like rebuking, not considering I'm new to this. In fact, I have felt from the start that the senior TAs have some air about them bossing around the newer junior TAs.

I did tell my students later via our forum that we'll be slower next time, and I am receptive to feedback if they have any. However, I feel I'm lacking specific direction to improve, and I'm thinking of too many things and overdoing it, really. Is there advice I should specifically focus on taking up?

I really like teaching, but I don't want my classes' quality to take a hit due to my poor time managing skills or my zeal to share what may be helpful. I don't want people to attend because it's mandatory. I also realized in the first class that my students are not very open to share, which is okay because it's the first class, and likely their first uni class in totality. Yet, I would like to get them to feel free in the classes and not feel shy to share, and I'm ready to make resources like polls and quizzes to the purpose as well. Are there things I can do to get people to speak up and feel more comfortable?

Sigh... I'm in Y2 in NUS, and not really a huge fan of gen-AI, though I don't completely avoid it (I do avoid it for uni work though lol), so I really wish I didn't post this. However, I have some cousins of mine who are so, so pro-"gen AI in everything" both in tech and stuff, constantly yapping about Claude Code, Codex, Fable, Opus 4.8, blah blah. Like, they've graduated a while ago before the AI craze but now outsource almost all their thinking work in AI. One day they reprimanded me for not being in vogue for AI, and kept forcing me to ask around and post on Reddit and stuff (they know about this sub cuz ofc why wouldn't they, they've been students in SG too) about like access of premium versions of the LLMs using a student account.

So, TL;DR, anyone in uni used your student account to get access to not-free trial versions of Claude/Gemini?

ETA: Anyone else have relatives like these who are into the AI trend so deep? Advice to deal w them?

Context, I'm originally from a moderately populated but somewhat infamous country (low-trust society and also maybe for our attitude/work ethic?) and I recently moved to a high-income country. I've been trying my very, very best to up my civic presence and trying not to disturb people, who here are actually quite irritable.

However, today, I had to move my stuff from one corner of my current city to another. I don't own any monumental stuff, only clothes and devices. Half of my stuff was sent by a regular moving truck, while I had to hand-carry half of it (long story). I figured I'll just take a taxi to my destination and carry stuff.

For some reason, I couldn't find one taxi that was available at the time, so I had to carry a suitcase, two thick-ass bags and one smaller bag all through public transport. It was the last thing I wanted to do, but since I had done smaller suitcases on the train before, I figured I'd somehow manage. Oh, anything but.

Because my bags were a bit thick, I had no way to properly carry them in a manner that didn't look like I'd occupy space equivalent to three people. Also, for some reason, one of my bag straps fell loose as I was headed towards the station, leading to it falling off constantly. Then, at the station, I had to use an elevator to get to the platform. Today, as luck would have it, the station elevator was crowded as fuck. Constant influx and outflux of people I've never seen at that station. With all of that, I had to stodgily plod along with my luggage onto the train and out. Some people were visually quite irritated by me occupying so much place and being slow. I didn't really have a choice. Even worse, I looked all sweaty and unkempt when in fact I had showered just before all this conundrum. In fact, the lady at the train was like, "What, are you like some asylum seeker from <a certain underdeveloped country> here?" I was like "No, what?"

I'm quite sure my lack of civic sense ticked off many people. It would've been annoying to these folks who just wanted to get home for me struggling with my luggage. I've been unable to shed some of these stupid errors in my civic abilities and so always feel like the public eye looks down on me. I want to assimilate, not stick out like a sore thumb, but every single thing like this puts me further away from it.

TL;DR: shitty civic sense in public transport, carrying heavy luggage (but didn't have any other options), leading to guilt