Post 91: September Coming: A Few To-Dos, including GTIOP, our new TAC, and the TA Conference!

I know I said I'd write about my experiences of the EA Global conference as my next post, but a few important things have come up between, and I'm still working on that post. :)

I'm leaving for my trip home tomorrow, and I've been populating a list of things to do before I leave. One of those was remembering that the Graduate Student Tuition Income Offset Plan, which sets up a preauthorized electronic debit (PAD) with the university for 4 equal monthly payments of your tuition, instead of having you pay all of your tuition at the beginning of the semester. I've written about it previously here, and have found it immensely useful for keeping up on my financial well-being, and organizing my finances more generally. The deadline to submit the form so you're set up for the year is 15 September.

Cute neighbourhood succulent #1! <3

Dr. Anita Girvan left for a prestigious year long position at a Bucknell University in Pennsylvania after she finished her PhD last year (yay!), and the position of Teaching Assistant Consultant for the School of Environmental Studies has remained open over the past year. I'm glad to say that now the lovely Ms. Kristen Walsh has filled that position!

As our new TAC, she's been working hard to complete the training that comes with the position. I bumped into her last week at UH4 where she made a few comments about the work involved. I hadn't anticipated there to be so much training, but it makes a lot of sense! Thinking back to Anita, she put quite a lot of effort into the resources and sessions she provided us as teaching assistants (TAs), and there's quite a lot to think about if it's your first time TAing. I'm sure the training would also cover how to talk to TAs that are teaching for the first time, and for the students that already have a class or two in their TA roster.

I remember having the thought that the leap from being an undergraduate student to two years later suddenly being in the position of grading students' work (especially when it seemed to me that I was little more qualified than when I had been a student myself) felt a little bit concerning. Between the training provided by Anita, and the TA conferences I attended, I felt much much more prepared to do a good job as a new TA.

Cute neighbourhood succulent #2! <3

Speaking of: the TA Conference is coming up again! Plan out your schedule for it this year. The beginning of the semester is always a busy one, not the least of which is because there are welcome events, the Fall TA Conference and training, and for new graduate students, other orientations as well. But, the TA Conference is one that I highly, highly recommend.

This year the conference is being held Tuesday 6th September to Friday 9th September.

I've written about my enthusiasm and experiences at the conference previously here, and here, and while I'll be away for the conference this year, I'll definitely be thinking about it!  For those of you who can't make the conference in the fall, no fear! There is also the Spring TA conference that happens early January. (No link provided currently because there's only 2016 information posted.)

And cute neighbourhood succulent #3! <3

Post 90: Family Planning and Resources -- Considerations for Grad Students

This is another guest post with my lovely friend and colleague Dr. Garrett Richards!! The idea for this post came up during a catch-up the two of us had a few weeks ago, following the announcement that he and his wife would be expecting their first child in November. (So exciting!) So, here goes our post on parental leave and family resources on campus: 

As Garrett writes: "Early-career researchers (e.g. graduate students, postdoctoral fellows) tend to belong to the age group in which many people have their first child. As such, they may have to navigate the difficulties of parental leave and childcare without the standard benefits that apply to "typical" full-time employees. My partner and I will be having a baby in November. What follows are some of my thoughts on parental leave, based on my experiences as a postdoctoral fellow. I hope other early-career researchers might find the information useful. 

Gorgeous jasmine from the back deck! :)

Parental leave means getting some time off so that you can be with your new child and manage the transition, usually one year in total for each birth or adoption (i.e. having multiple children at once doesn't increase the time period). The parents can split this time however they like. For example, one partner could take a year off while the other remains at work, they could both take six months off at the same time, or they could each take six months off at different times to total one year. 

You should inform your supervisor of your plans several months ahead of time. For many graduate students, this will be a fairly simple request, unless your research is heavily integrated with that of someone else in your lab. You will generally need to get approval from both your university and anyone else that may be paying you. Check with your corresponding union to see if there are any particular provisions or procedures you should be aware of. By the way, it is a good idea for men to take some parental leave, since it helps break down the stereotype that only women make career sacrifices for their family. The far more complicated factor is parental benefits, which means getting paid while you are on parental leave, since you obviously cannot accept your normal stipend or scholarship while you are off work. 

Mystery flower down in Cadboro Bay.

Unions, again, are a good place to start your investigation on this, keeping in mind that you may belong to multiple unions. However, provisions for early-career researchers generally seem to be pretty scant. When I checked the collective agreement for sessional lecturers at my university, there was only a section on parental leave, not parental benefits (and when I phoned the union directly, they said no one had ever asked about that before, which I found surprising). Make sure to examine the provisions of your stipend or scholarship too, if you have one. For example, SSHRC fellowships (for both doctoral students and postdoctoral fellows) have a parental benefits program.

Although you should definitely look into these various avenues, your best chance of parental benefits is probably through employment insurance and the federal government. For information, head to the "Having a Baby" section of the Canada Service website (http://www.servicecanada.gc.ca/eng/lifeevents/baby.shtml). While this page is a fountain of general information, you'll want to examine the "Maternity and Parental Benefits" link in particular (http://www.esdc.gc.ca/en/ei/maternity_parental/index.page). Here, you can read about eligibility for parental leave. In general, if you have worked at least 600 insurable hours in the 52 weeks prior to the start of your leave, you can receive 55% of your insurable weekly earnings during the leave period. A good way to check on your accumulated insurable hours is to register for a "My Service Canada" account (http://www.esdc.gc.ca/en/msca/index.page), keeping in mind that they will have to send you an access code through the mail, which could take a few weeks.

Lovely summer hydrangea, their colours starting to fade out. 

The trickiest part of all this is that the main work done by early-career researchers generally does not qualify as insurable hours (after all, you are probably getting "paid" through a scholarship, not a salary). Only the work you do as a TA, RA, or sessional lecturer will count, and in my experience it's pretty rare for an early-career researcher to amass 600 hours of such work in a given year. This means that planning is very important when it comes to having a child at this stage of your career. I was fortunate in a few ways. First, since my partner and I are splitting the leave, and my half won't start until next May, I had some extra time to figure everything out. Second, I have a SSHRC fellowship, which will cover my parental benefits (although, interestingly enough, I have to decline those benefits if I am eligible for any others, which means I have to make sure I *do not* work 600 insurable hours in the 52 weeks prior to my leave). 

In reality, I think a lot of early-career researchers make do without parental benefits. Aside from the financial implications, it can actually be a pretty good time to have a child, given its flexibility. The best thing you can do is make sure you know what options are available to you. In short, check with your union, your funding, and the government. Finally, it's never too early to start thinking about childcare options, which are often available on university campuses if you put your name on the waiting list early enough."

****

A very cool looking but very dead bug on the sidewalk that ants were fighting over.

Garrett did a really good job (above) covering some of the general information and considerations for taking parental leave and the resources you should look at in Canada. I did some poking around about what other kinds of resources there are for child care on campus, and UVic's Childcare Services information can be found here. For childcare, there are, as Garrett points out above, very lengthy wait-times: a minimum of 2 years for children under the age of three, and between 3 and 5, it's about a year and a half. I also highly recommend checking out the program fees for said childcare, because keeping on top of your finances is also part of your health as a grad student.

As a grad student, you can also apply to live in family housing right on campus, which is pretty great. There's both apartment or townhouse style accommodation available.

UVic's Residences Services Family Resources page also provides information on public schools that are close by to campus (one elementary, two secondary, and one French immersion elementary school), and the Family Centre also provides information for a variety of things, including to health care resources on campus, connecting with the Family Centre, their programs, and fun things like their Welcome Back barbecue. 

Wishing all those out there planning families and with families under way lots of love! You have supports you can draw on, and I hope this post can help illuminate a few you may not have know about right off the bat. 

**Quick note: My next post will be covering my time at the Effective Altruism Global Conference in Berkeley, California this weekend. Keep your eyes open for it! :) 

Post 86: Grad Student Resources: Tech Help on Campus

I'm writing this post with my colleague Sally in mind. Sally is a mature graduate student, having returned to university to complete a PhD to study other folks' motivations for similar volunteer work that she has done for years and years. There's a lot to admire about Sally: her kindness, her empathy, her hard work, her humour, and her willingness to problem solve and seek out resources when she doesn't know how to do something herself. She has a skill I'm not particularly good at: asking for help! For a bit more context, Sally is in a position where technology has quickly moved past the skills she learned and applied during her professional life, and she's had to do some scrambling to pick up some of those skills for her PhD work.

At the same time, I'm writing this post because I think it's generally quite useful to know your resources as a graduate student, because you never know what'll come up when you're working with software and hardware during your degree! So this post will talk about some of the tech resources we have on campus here at the University of Victoria, whether you want some extra help in making tables in Word, or learning how to make diagrams and visual models from your data.

One of several different roses at the BC Parliament Buildings. Gorgeous!

Resource 1: Your Colleagues and Peers
Intergenerational graduate student relationships are SO important during grad school. They help to counter the Impostor Syndrome, build collegiality and community, and if you're the one asking for help, you get to let other people look and feel smart and valued! And, by the time that people are in graduate school, you never know what kinds of skills and resources they have brought with them from their previous years of experience! Ask away! Ask people in your own cohort, as well as those further into their degrees: either second year or third year and up master's students, or other PhD students. In my own lab, a previous graduate student of my supervisor's gave us a presentation on how to use NVivo, a qualitative data analysis program that I subsequently used for my thesis work. I also met with her one-on-one for a more in-depth discussion afterwards, which was quite useful. I also had other graduate students make recommendations for me about different programs to use and other tips, so you never know what will all come up when you happen to fall into research conversation. And as you advance in your program, make yourself available for newer graduate students so you can help them out if they need a hand. I just responded to a few questions about transcribing for a colleague, and it was helpful for me to reflect on my own progress and the programs that I've learned to use during my degree.

I was also recently stumped about how to make a specific diagram for my thesis, when my awesome colleague Tanya recommended Lucid Chart, which she has been using for her own thesis. The free version is quite good, and has been more than enough to meet my thesis needs so far. If we hadn't bumped into each other and talked at the office, I certainly wouldn't have been able to solve my problem so expediently!

Love the texture and aesthetic of these little stonecrops (Sedum sp.)! 

Resource 2: Your Supervisor
If your supervisor wants you to use a specific program or software for your graduate work, they probably have used it themselves, or know why they want you to use AtlasTi instead of NVivo (different software for the same purpose: qualitative research analysis). Your supervisor will be a treasure trove of information on specific programs or software, and will also know about other resources if they aren't entirely certain themselves. Sometimes the reasons for choosing on program over another are as arbitrary as exposure—NVivo has been around longer than AtlasTi—but in any case, your supervisor should not be an underestimated resource. A few weeks ago, my supervisor and I could be found in our office meeting room problem-solving how to import the UVic thesis template into Scrivener, the composition program I've been using to write my thesis in.

For high-learning curve programs like ArcGIS or Adobe Photoshop or R (statistical data analysis program), you will likely be taking specific classes to learn to use these, and some of them may even have been requirements for entry into your grad school program, depending on your department. Frequently, however, graduate school is an opportunity to dive deeply into something, and learning new programs or statistical methods are certainly within the scope of what you can do in grad school. It depends partly on what you want to learn, how you see the opportunities available to you in grad school, and what you need to negotiate/discuss with your supervisor.

But that brings me to another thought: you can ask other professors in your department or across campus for their two cents of advice when you need it. Your supervisor can make introductions, or you can take initiative and reach out on your own. If they're not able to help you with the specific question you have, then they can likely make recommendations for where you need to go.

Foxglove (Digitalis purpurea) from a wander on Galiano Island!

Resource 3: The Computer Help Desk
The Computer Help Desk has saved my butt and my work both during undergrad, and during my graduate degree. They are there to help problem-solve computer related issues, including equipment repair and network problems. Go check them out if you're getting Windows' blue screen of death, or the Mac equivalent of the blinking folder with a question mark. But also, please be wise, and make back-ups and follow other general data-management to-dos so you don't have them telling you that your hard-drive is corrupted, and all your work is gone.

Resource 4:  Computer Labs at UVic
There are several Computer Labs, some with specific focus, on campus. Each of these has friendly and capable staff that can provide help for your Windows or Mac questions. I haven't used these much myself, but the help is there. They are there for graduate student use, as well as for undergrads, so if you're teaching and need to make recommendations for your students, it's good to know about these as well.

Resource 5: The McPherson Library's Media and Music Equipment to Borrow!
So it turns out that you can borrow a whole bunch of different equipment from the library: everything from laptops and computers, to noise-cancelling headphones, to video cameras, to foot pedals for transcription! Bill Blair is the Music and Media librarian, and you can contact him about availability of the equipment, though I suspect if you were really in a pinch, you could ask him about how to use some of the equipment as well. For more involved tech stuff, your supervisor or your colleagues will probably be more helpful in either troubleshooting specific hardware issues, but I have an inkling that Bill would probably be able to make some useful suggestions for where to go as well. If not, there's always The Internet (discussed below).

The Music and Media Commons area also has some other hardware and software that you can use. Everything from scanners to Google Earth Pro, to the full Microsoft Office suite and Open Office Suites, to Garage Band, and lots and lots of others. It's actually amazing to me how many different programs there are available to use. There are tutorials within the programs (and Help pages, too), though you can likely also ask the librarians in that section of the library for help. I think that you'll have some thinking to do about where to spend money on programs that are needed for your thesis projects. Do you use the resources publicly available though perhaps limited in scope because of sharing the resource, or do you spend some of your own research budget to get your own copy of these programs? Asking these questions should probably happen with your supervisor, as discussed above. However, doing simple things, like using the scanners and turning hard copy versions of journal articles into digital ones, are things that aren't too difficult to learn on your own.

Western Starflower (Trientalis latifolia) from a wander through East Sooke Park recently. 

Resource 6: Other Specific Tech Resources
Are you TAing a class? Do you have power-point presentations? Do you want to show videos during your lectures? Do you need to organize a meeting with between your supervisor and committee member, but one of them is out in the field in Ontario, and needs to be video-conferenced in? The Audiovisual and Multimedia services on campus is our resource for all of these things at UVic!

My lab group and I have had one, if not two, presentations on Blue Jeans, the video-conferencing software that the University of Victoria has recently endorsed. We had a presentation from one of the fellows from the Audiovisual and Multimedia services, and it was super helpful! Your department may be pro-active and organize one of these presentations for your and your grad student cohort, or you may need to take initiative and get such a presentation organized yourself, but the resource is there.

Resource 7: The Internet
If it's 1:32AM, and you're at home plugging away and your research project, and you're asking yourself, what kinds of software is out there to help process interview files, you can always ask Google (no need to be as polite as this British grandmother, though!). This is how I came across Express Scribe, a free transcription software that was easy to use, and super helpful for transcribing my interviews.

Maybe you have a more specific computer issue that you're dealing with? Google and the dispersed intelligence of the Internet can probably help you, too. So, don't be afraid to look around for help in unexpected places. Afterall, we're researchers. We can ask questions, and get resourceful about finding the answers to those questions.

There are likely other resources (both on-campus and off) that I have missed. If you know of any, let me know, and I'll update the post!

Post 44: Mental Health Awareness at UVic

This lunch hour I attended the first of two round table talks on Mental Health Awareness, put on by UVic's Mental Health Task Force, and it was very, very good. This talk was about Anxiety: When The Worry Won't Stop; the second, on March 18th, from 12:00-1:30, will discuss Living, Learning, and Working with a Mental Health Diagnosis, in MacLaurin Room D 010.

We started off with a really refreshing and brief meditation session, where the fellow that led the session got us all to ground ourselves, and focus our attention to breathing. For some people, it was the first time they had ever done something like that, and it was great to hear how much of a difference it made to them! I don't usually like the sitting/standing still and meditating practices; I am a meditate-in-motion kind of person, and find a lot of calm when I exercise. This is also one of the main reasons why I prefer really active yoga like flow, or ashtanga, as opposed to the slower ones like yin or meditation yoga. But for the start of the workshop, I thought this was great!

Another wonderful evening on campus! My skyline, just before catching the bus home at the end the day. 

Reflecting on the talk, this post will highlight the people and resources that I am able to recall, as well as briefly discuss a couple of the themes that arose. I was amazed by how diverse a crowd the talk drew: there were a variety of resource folks present, and it was a nice mix of internal and external resources I didn't know UVic or the wider community had. The introductions went quite quickly, so I didn't manage to remember any names, but here are the resources that I remember.

UVic Counselling Services: they run a number of workshops on stress and anxiety and managing panic, through a variety of techniques, including cognitive behavioural therapy, ACT (acceptance and commitment therapy), and mindfulness practices. Here's a link for those workshops.  A number of their counsellors can also be visited with individual appointments as well.

UVic Human Resources also had a staff person there, one of their Work Life Consultants; he expressed that if you're someone who is dealing with a mental health illness, then HR can work with that individual to sort out adjustments that can be made so their work relationship at the University can still be a positive and productive one.

Dr. Lara Robinson, a professor from the Psychology department was there, and offered a number of important advice points, and shared that she takes on a couple of clients each semester at a reduced rate, addressing anxiety mental health issues. She also mentioned that the Psychology department has ongoing studies and research relating to wellness and anxiety, so send her an email if that sounds interesting at all. From what I remember, she mentioned that you could pair up with graduate student at a very reduced rate ($10 per session) to address ongoing problems.

Darryl (sp?) who works with/at the Anxiety Clinic in Victoria also had a very strong presence during the discussion, and it was very clear that he was well versed in the science of treating anxiety disorders and issues. He described anxiety issues as "bad mental habits," which is, I think, a very good way to think about anxiety.

Lovely bouquet i put together last year; my partner loves lilies, and I loved the bright colour contrast. :) 

One of the Residence Life student coordinators was there to share his perspective on both living with and dealing with anxiety himself, and training his crew of residence advisors to help provide resources and support to students. ResLife comes into contact with about 60-70% of the first year student population at UVic, so they have an immense impact with students. I spoke with him right after the talk and it sounds like ResLife is making a big effort to make sure students are aware of their resources when it comes to dealing with mental health, and that was really great to hear. Here's a link to some of the activities they put on in residence.

There was also a lovely gal from the Meditation Club on campus there! They put on regular meditation sessions to encourage and support students with decompressing from the stress of academia. And that is probably one of the main themes that arose during the session: the importance of grounding exercises, meditation, and bringing awareness to simple things like breathing. Darryl from the Anxiety Clinic mentioned that a panic attack can be triggered by shallow breathing, which we do when we're really stressed out. So the square breathing technique can be really helpful: breathing in for 4 seconds, holding the breath for 4 seconds, breathing out for 4 seconds, and holding the breath for another 4 seconds before inhaling again.

There were a number of people from different places across campus in the crowd, some faculty, some students, some grad students like myself, as well as parents that deal with anxiety, and parents with children who deal with anxiety. I was also very pleased to see great representation from Campus Security there! One of them mentioned that they are increasingly getting calls from students, faculty, and staff that deal with anxiety and mental health issues across campus. This reminds me that I recently read about the Nelson police chief wanting to establish a Mental Health Car like the one that Vancouver has, to better address the increasing calls they see there, which I think is a phenomenal idea!

Grumpy cat pal that I encountered on one of my evening walks in Oak Bay! :)

One of the most important themes of the discussion was around normalizing these kinds of mental health issues. A lot of people deal with them, and universities breed anxiety, even for people who don't otherwise have full blown disorders or may only have one panic attack, or deal with low-level anxiety that doesn't regularly interfere with their work or daily life. So when encountering someone who's dealing with anxiety, listening to them, admitting when we don't know much about what their experience is, or being authentic and sincere when empathizing with them, and referring them to places where they do have resources is probably one of the best things we can do.

As educators, I think one of the main things we can do to reduce the stigma of mental health issues is to encourage transparency around these issues. I know in one or two of my tutorials this semester I mentioned that if students are struggling with anything (mental health, personal life challenges, other health issues, or just bad scheduling, such as 3 assignments in 2 days), they can let me know and I will do my best to accommodate their need. I've had a couple students contact me with such requests, and it seems to have made a really big difference for them.

Talking about, acknowledging, and accepting in a non-judgmental way that people can suffer from and with these often invisible issues was another of the main themes that came from the discussion, whether it was a comment from a student who has been dealing with anxiety for years, or one of the resource people acknowledging that people build these behavioural habits, which become messy when avoidance and poor relationships and communication enter the mix, too.

Whew! This post has already become a lot longer than I'd thought, so I'll end it here! I'm glad I went to this workshop, and I now know a lot more about some of the anxiety resources we have across campus and from without, and I hope that should I be in a teaching position in the future, I'll remember to at least at one point during the semester (preferably at the beginning), mention to my students that if they're dealing with a mental health issue or other issues, they can let me know and I can try to accommodate the unexpected challenges that life throws our way sometimes.

Post 30: Okay: The TA Conference was Fantastic Beyond My Remembrance!!

I have had an absolute blast at the TA Conference (run by the Learning and Teaching Centre [LTC]) over the past week! I attended 2 years ago during my first year, but last year didn't go as I was still undertaking interviews for my research. In reflecting on my experience at the conference, it's clear that all of the presenters are people who care very much about how we can be better TAs, better professionals, and ultimately, better instructors.

In this post I'll briefly highlight the workshops I attended to give you a sense of why it's valuable to attend the workshop and develop your professional skills as a graduate student.  If you weren't able to make the Fall TA Conference, there is one held in early January, too, so fear not! As well, workshops for TA and Graduate Student professional development are also run all year long through the LTC. (I also recognize that there's only so much that I can put into a post, and express my excitement for the workshops; far better that you try to attend a few in the spring!)

I attended 7** workshops over the past week. Tuesday was the big day, where the most concurrent sessions are held, and where, as a byproduct of the structure of the conference, you'll miss a lot of the others. For this reason, repeat workshops were held for the rest of the week (or at least, a lot of them had repeats). And wow—very glad to be inside on Tuesday after our epic monsoon-like showers and thunder!

Clouds reflected in a rain puddle, near the Library! 

So on Tuesday, I attended two workshops whose theme was 'Preparing for a Teaching Career in Higher Education.' For one, that was the actual title, for the other, it was a discussion about the LATHE program, which is a 2 year certificate specifically focused on learning and teaching in higher ed.
The first workshop focused on the importance of preparing a teaching dossier: a document that includes all sorts of supporting documentation to show how effective an instructor you are. Some of these components include an evidence-based teaching narrative (replacing the older teaching philosophy), syllabi, TA experiences, course evaluations and reviews, guest lectures—all the things that comprise the evidence that shows that you would be a great instructor to hire! The LATHE certificate program (which will show up on your graduate certificate) is geared towards officializing that commitment to great teaching even more. Predictions from the panel of presenters (the instructors for the three LATHE courses) reiterated a couple times that while this type of certificate is an emerging phenomenon, and that it only makes sense: to teach at the secondary and elementary levels, you need to do a separate degree in that; why not for teaching at the post-secondary level, too?

A third workshop by Jill Harvey from the Department of Geography covered transitioning from being a TA to being a sessional instructor and also emphasized the importance of readying a teaching dossier, because by the time you're applying for teaching positions, it should be ready to go. You will be asked for it at some point during the hiring phase. She also included a quick discussion on pitching your own course, and why that may be useful.

The last workshop I attended Tuesday was about experiential learning with David Barrett, the TAC from Geography, and how TA's can incorporate all sorts of activities into their tutorials or lessons. Experiential learning is fantastic because it speaks to all of the major types of learners: those who primarily learn through visuals, those who learn through auditory means, and those who are kinesthetic learners (hands-on). A few examples of experiential learning (there are many) include role plays, field trips, interviews, debates, using equipment, field schools, and more.

WEDNESDAY, I learned a lot about CourseSpaces (the new Moodle) that facilitates running a class online, sharing teaching materials, and engaging with students. Last year I sent all my tutorial materials to the professor who posted them onto CourseSpaces. I learned so much more about having a run-through trial, and as a TA, saw that we can actually do a lot on the course page! Very very good. And the facilitator, from the Technology Integrated Learning folks on campus did a great job! She also pointed me to what seems like a fantastic resource: a number of support videos and other documents to help professors (and TAs) get familiar and comfortable with CourseSpaces if we haven't before. A similar set of resources exists for students. 

I also learned about puzzles, artefacts, and art—three different activities that can bring to life the materials that we present in class, with Iryna Matiyenko from the Political Science Department. These activities were also centred around the Kolb learning cycle, to again, make sure that we reach different kinds of learners. I found this workshop extremely engaging and found myself thinking of much more creative ways to get students engaged with the materials I would be teaching them.

THURSDAY, yesterday, I attended a workshop led by Caroline Winter from the English Department, on how to encourage students to edit their own work. The main point was simply to mention it to them, since undergrads may not know that editing and revising is a big part of writing. The LTC encourages the 40-20-40 writing model: 40% researching and planning and brainstorming, 20% writing (first draft, usually), and 40% revising and editing. This model shows just how big a part of writing the editing and revising stage is. It's one I've encountered previously, through another workshop held by the LTC. (The LTC really rocks!)
A tip here as well: maybe include one short grammar lesson as part of your tutorial every so often (as an alternative to spending an entire tutorial/class/session on a big grammar dump) especially if students will be producing reports or writing essays or other writing assignments during the semester. Even covering some of the most common errors in writing that students seem to make (according to the presenter) such as comma splices and run-on sentences and knowing how to use colons and semi-colons correctly would be great. :)

This afternoon I have one more workshop on 'Avoiding Death by Paper,'which is tips and strategies on how to survive essay marking. Very much looking forward to it.

But yes: I am definitely, definitely am very glad that I participated in the TA Conference! And, as one of the presenters mentioned: it's a great way to network and meet other TAs in other departments who also care about the things you do. :) I know I met some lovely grad students in some of my workshops!


** I made sure to attend at least 6 workshops not only because they are fun, but because on doing so, the LTC will print out a certificate of participation that you can include on your CV or as part of your work history. Being able to demonstrate that you have an interest in teaching and continual learning and skill development can be important for your work.