Tue, 29 Oct 2013, 12:12

My students,

I have been told that some of you are taking advantage of the TAs in very
inappropriate ways.  For example, not going to TA discussion sessions or
even office hours but instead sending email to my TAs containing your .bin
file or .asm file and the question, "What is wrong with this?"  

I have instructed my TAs to answer such email with: Dr. Patt prefers that 
I tell you to come to office hours where a TA can work with you one-on-one.  

It turns out that office hours is a much better way to handle your question 
than have the TA try to deal with it without you sitting next to him/her.  
If you are sitting next to him/her, the TA can ask you questions to quickly
get to the heart of the problem.  You will learn more this way.  It is also
the case the TA will spend less time helping you with your problem.

In fact, if we let your emails continue, my very caring TAs will end up 
spending 40 hours/week TAing, and that is not acceptable.  They are
students also, and they have their own courses to study for.  Please be 
considerate of them.  If I have to increase the number of office hours each
spends, I will do that.  But I can not have them flunking their own courses
because they are unable to say no to a EE 306 student's email.

Good luck with the rest of the semester.  I am delighted with the number of
you that are now starting to catch on, and I remain hopeful for the rest of
you.

See you in class tomorrow.

Yale Patt