Sunday, I was not the happiest of campers. Yesterday was a completely different story. All day long Penn State Hillel was cooking, cleaning, and setting up for three seders--enough food and table settings for 500 people. It was insane. We were running around all day. 
I was getting nervous because I was hosting the very first Women's Seder at Penn State Hillel. I had complied the haggadah (the book that you read during the seder) over my spring break. When we first had it printed, none of the Hebrew I had typed was in the printed copies. Luckily we were able to fix that before the seder. Also, the Traditional Seders had closed--there was no more room to register for these seders, so anyone who wanted to come to Seder at Penn State Hillel registered for the Women's Seder. It meant that there were people who didn't necessarily want to be there attending my seder. 

At 7pm the crowds started to arrive. The registration line wrapped around most of the Pasquerilla Spiritual lobby and was almost out the door. We filled the downstairs seder with 300 people and the two upstairs seders had another 200 people total. There were a lot of people all coming to celebrate the Jewish holiday of Passover. 

My seder was different than most, as it was a Women's Seder (see Hagaddah). But there was a communal aspect that made this seder unique. I had everyone introduce themselves at their tables and each table was then responsible for readings throughout the evening. We talked about the women involved in the story and how this tradition relates to women today. 

There was a group of fraternity guys who did not register in time for the traditional seder and thus came to the Women's Seder to celebrate passover. They participated like the other tables, and after someone said something to them, they stopped talking while others were reading. They even apologized to me at one point for being disrespectful and were very thankful for this new opportunity they experienced. 

Everyone had a great time. All I heard was how wonderful this seder was and how appreciative the participants were for being able to try something new. It was wonderful because it was more intimate than the huge 300-person traditional seder downstairs and because we created a community within our group. I had such a fantastic time and cannot wait to do it again next year!

Happy Passover!

Today I was made to feel incredibly worthless. I was made to feel that I was not Jewish enough and that my education was not good enough. I was not allowed to stand by myself in the kosher for passover kitchen. I needed a supervisor. I apparently do not know the laws of kashrut as they pertain to passover well enough to watch water boil for soup. I participated in the passover preparations at Hillel last year. I am a Jewish Studies major, a religious school teacher, and the daughter of two practicing Jews who both work in a synagogue. I believe that I am well versed in the customs and traditions associated with Passover. However, some do not. I am not sure whether this person did not value my knowledge, education or experience because I am a reform Jew, I am not as traditional as he is, or because I am a woman, or because he has talked to other people about the laws of kashrut for passover more so than he has talked to me. No matter what the reason, I felt completely worthless. That nothing I did was valuable or appreciated. That my efforts to bring new religious programming to Penn State are not respected or supported by this person. 
But why do I need his respect? I am the type of person who needs to be respected in response to my respect for someone else. And in this case, I certainly am not feeling the respect I feel I deserve in response to the respect I have shown him and his beliefs. Just because I may not be as observant as he is, I do understand his customs, at least what he does, maybe not why he does them. I feel I deserve the same courtesy that I am showing him. Today I certainly did not get that, and it made me feel completely worthless.  

This year I had a TA that I did not get along with. Most TAs that I've had have been understanding of our knowledge and had reasonable expectation for what we needed to do in lab. This was not the case in organic chemistry. I really didn't have high expectation for her at the beginning of the semester. But as we moved through the course, she really wasn't meeting my expectations at all. The pre-lab discussions would focus on minute details that weren't necessary to reiterate. The demonstrations she provided us where not well prepared and frankly useless. Her expectations for us in our report and lab work were not laid out at the start of the semester. But probably the most frustrating part was attitude and her lack of respect for us as students. 
When I would get a report or quiz back, I would read it over to see if I had any questions or didn't understand what her comments meant. I would ask her to explain what she was correcting and she talked to me very defensively--like she was arguing with me about why she had to take these points off. I wasn't questioning the loss of points, I was asking her to explain the concept to me. She wasn't listening to my questions. 

We just received our first formal report back with the comments and my marks were much lower than the comments seemed to merit, at least in my opinion. Because there were extensive comments and I had many question, I went to office hours to meet with my TA to discuss this issue one-on-one. Arriving a few minutes early to the meeting was apparently not the best move on my part. My TA questioned why I was early and walked in defending herself, before I had even asked a question. The answers she gave in response to my questions did not answer my questions at all. She assured me that the points would be given back with the corrections, when I was asking her to explain how her comments changed the meaning of my sentence. I couldn't see the difference and she couldn't explain them. Frustrated, I left without really understanding what I did wrong. 

I made an appointment to talk to the lab coordinator about my TA's attitude and approach to dealing with students. That meeting did not go any better than the meeting my with TA. The coordinator explained that there were many students and many TAs, each with different personalities and grading styles. She told me to wait and see what happened with the next lab report and to talk to her again once those were graded. I went to her to see what her suggestions would be about talking to my TA who didn't answer my questions--were there other TAs to talk to? A way that she has found that works when communicating with my TA? Maybe I didn't phrase my questions correctly, but I wasn't getting the answers I was looking for from either the coordinator or the TA. 

It is very frustrating to be confused, to be expressing that confusion and asking questions and then not having those questions answered. It makes me feel like I'm not being heard and that my confusion is not worth clarification. I thought they were supposed to be teaching me about the concepts and writing styles for a professional chemist. At this point, all I feel I've learned is that my TA cannot communicate well with students and that I should just deal with it until the end of the semester.