SANS TA

Having an interesting week this week.  Working as a TA for SANS.  I wasn't quite sure I was ready for it.  Still not sure I'm ready for it.  Currently Day 4.  So far most of the questions haven't been too difficult.  I've come across some that I didn't know exactly how to resolve them without asking someone for help or looking them up.  Anyone who's worked in technical support knows that that is normal.

I'm hoping that this first time isn't my last time as a TA.  I enjoy helping people and learning from people that are more knowledgeable than I am.  It's difficult to read exactly what the instructor thinks about my performance, though.  The conversations between myself and the instructor have been, "Everything ok?", "Hi.", and "How are you?"  Don't misunderstand, he's a nice guy.  Just haven't talked to him a lot.

One big tip for people who are considering being a TA:

Always recheck what the students say.  This is not anything against students at all.  The students all come from different backgrounds, and many of them are probably more knowledgeable than you are, but, sometimes it's really easy to overlook one little thing, especially when there are long training hours.  We are in bootcamp hours:  9AM - 7PM.

Example:  Two similar user names are on the virtual machine.  The usernames have the same password.  Sometimes students log into the wrong one.
I asked, "Did you log in to the correct user?"  They thought that they did.  I didn't follow up on it to check because if you're in this class, you probably know at least as much or more than I do.  So, the time I spent fixing a couple of short cuts so that they could complete a lab could have  taken less time just by switching users.

I'm taking notes of some of the issues that came up this time, just in case I get to do this again, so I can remember what to look for next time.  I'm sure if I do this again, I'll get some more off the wall questions.  There's always something more to learn.

"R00k" has a good guide on being a TA.  You may want to visit his blog for more information: https://r00k.io/2017/05/experiences-of-a-sans-ta/.