My TA assignment: 139W, Critical Writing on Information Technology

I suppose part of the PhD experience is the rite of passage of being a teaching assistant, and I got my TA assignment yesterday. Unless it changes, which seems quite possible (this all seems fairly loosely organized), I'll be supporting Darren Denenberg with 139W, Critical Writing on Information Technology. The course description says:

Study and practice of critical writing and oral communication as it applies to information technology. Each student writes assignments of varying lengths, totaling at least 4,000 words.

I'll let the 4000 words part sort of dangle out there....

I'm really quite curious to see how students do with this, given that a) their high school classes probably failed to teach them anything and b) chatGPT exists.

Also interesting to me; my gross salary is $3,928.89, and corresponds to 20 hours a week. That's $24/hour, pre-tax. California minimum wage is $16.50. PhD students get free tuition and are offered free on-campus housing (which I think is inclusive of utilities), so that $24 needs to cover cost of living.

It's been a long time since I was a poor college student, but.... oof.