The Wishing Well

It seems like so long ago that Sarah and I stepped into TMF on the first day of TIC. I seriously have no idea what my life would be like right now had I not decided to take TIC. I’ve formed such a strong connection with the TIC community… stronger than I would have ever imagined I could with each and every person in a group as large as this one.

I’m so grateful that Kass and Trev asked me to TA this year. It was definitely different from being a student, and a little tough at first, but I got to experience the same feelings I had last summer again. It’s truly amazing how much you can miss people you didn’t even think you’d miss… I miss all of my students, even though they could get a little annoying at times. Yasmin, Wesley, Jo, Francisco, Eugene, Calsey, Tia, Misael, and Benjamin. I don’t want to forget any of them.

When you’re a student, you can just sit at your own computer and work on your own stuff. You don’t need to necessarily worry about or get to know any of your group members. But when you’re a TA, you end up creating this bond with each individual student in your group. I had to figure out how each of them learns best, and how to ease them into being creative with their own designs. I kind of shifted between pushing all of them to work all the time and letting them explore and do what they want. Thank you, Cindy, for giving me great advice on how to get my students to open up and helping me when I didn’t know how to explain things.

As for Building Next-Gen Web Apps… I got frustrated a lot, but I can’t say that I didn’t learn anything at all. I met some pretty interesting people, but our little group of five (Tansen, Chungster, Koki, Sarah, and I) stuck together pretty much the whole time, with help from Isaac, who was the only person who seemed to know what he was doing. Most important lesson learned: don’t depend on other people for things that are extremely important. And that the journey is often more interesting than the destination.

I’m kind of sad that I only started to really enjoy and appreciate TIC07 and ARC during the last week or so. The last day was pretty crazy, but totally encompassed what ATDP is about to me. How everyone is nice to everybody else, the learning experience, the food, throwing water (balloons) at each other, playing games, singing random songs, scaring other people, and sharing stories and memories. Even just walking together as a group makes me feel happy. Like I belong somewhere. I can only hope that, as a TA, I’ve been able to pass on this feeling of belonging, this feeling of being loved.

Of course, not even goodbyes can be completely sad in TIC… on the Fremont BART train coming back from Berkeley… err… to tell you the truth, I really have no idea what came over us, but it all started with the Chungster Wave. Which then progressed to Jeff’s Monster Look (see pictures at Sarah’s Flickr). I swear, we spent like the whole time trying to get Kass to do the wave. I was laughing so hard that I wasn’t sure if I was crying because of laughing or because everyone was leaving. But the hugs and goodbyes are just so… genuine. I know that these friends mean it.

The real goodbye only hit me when I dropped off Sarah… It’s hard not seeing someone that you’re used to seeing pretty much every day in the year for a whole entire month. I also only realized how much I missed everyone when I got home and was reading some weblog entries and talking to people and seeing how much the students missed TIC, too.

There’s a big difference between last year and this year. This year I know that once you take TIC, and you stay connected with everyone; you’re part of this community forever. I’m looking forward to getting to know the students who got weblogs and are part of PChat and talk with the TIC staff regularly: Allison, Brandon, Eugene, and Tiff. Because we are your friends… and you’ll never be alone again.

[edit] Holy. My design is a whole year old. X_X