Rules for TA Hours

Please review these rules before coming to see a TA. We will be strictly enforcing these guidelines, and we will not help you if we feel you have violated them.

  • You may only put your name on the list for TA hours once per hour. You must spend time working on fixing the issues you are running into before coming back to hours. We are ehre to help you figure out issues that you have been working on for a while and are not able to make progress on. We are not here for solve every issue for you.
  • You must have evidence of your attempts to solve the issue you are coming to hours about. If you don't have print lines in your code and/or can't explain what you have already tried to figure out your issue, the TAs will send you away to think about your issues on your own. You must have made a strong effort to fix your issues before coming to talk to a TA.
  • When you leave hours, you may not put your name on the list. You should not and cannot assume that you will have an issue by the time your name gets to the top of the list - this is not the point of TA hours. You should place your name on the list after you have run into an issue and have tried to solve it. If we see you doing this, we will erase your name from the list.
  • You may not put anyone's name on the list besides your own. "Doing a favor for a friend" is not a good excuse. Everyone must come up and put their own name on the list.
  • You may not start a list before a CS15 TA arrives. The Fishbowl may be open for other courses' hours before a CS15 TA is on hours. This does not mean you can put your name on the list. You should not assume that you will have a problem when the TA arrives. Also, TAs have no way of knowing whether people on an existing list are still in the CIT. If the first TA on hours sees a list already made, the TA will erase the list and start fresh.
  • When coming to TA hours for design related questions, please bring your UML diagram. Your design questions are the foundation of the code fo your project and should be used to explain what you are trying to do to the TAs. Feel free to change your UML diagram as you work since your design may change as you code.

These policies are in place to ensure that you are coding and debugging on your own, and that you are coming to TAs when you are unable to solve issues on your own. We are here to help if all else fails, but we will not solve every compiler or runtime error you have. You have the skills and resources to solve many of the issues you will encounter.