May 5, 1998: it's hard not to brag when people ask me what I'm doing this fall. I have to aim for that middle ground between false nonchalance and all-out boasting. Smile pleasantly and give them the 25-words-or-less version: "I'm going to Tahiti, where UC Berkeley owns a field station on the island of Moorea. I'll be a teaching assistant for a class of undergraduates working on research projects." Most common response: "Must be rough." Actually I think it will be, a little. Chasing after 22 undergrads on a tropical island is not necessarily my idea of paradise. However, if I can squeeze a dissertation proposal, or even a master's thesis, out of my time there, it will have been well worth the trip.

May 11: Got my first look at the students today, as everyone involved in Integrative Biology 158-that is, 22 students, three TA'9s and four faculty-met for an orientation before the students scatter for the summer. The students are kind of a cocky bunch, but why shouldn't they be? They're the winners in a rigorous competition to get into this class, for which they had to apply, interview, and submit letters of recommendation. Most are "A" students, most are upperclassmen, most have field or lab research experience under their belts. I feel a momentary quaver of inadequacy. There was no such rigor in my application for the teaching job; I've never been to the South Pacific, and I've never taught before. I thought there'd be a line of prospective applicants stretching out the door when I went to see Professor Vincent Resh, the director of the station. But for some reason, it's hard to get grad students to commit to a semester of teaching this class. Which gives me another quaver-what aren't they telling me?

September 1: When I think of the form I signed certifying that I would devote no more than 20 hours per week to this class, I don't know whether to laugh or cry. Since the semester started, I've been in lectures with the students nearly 20 hours a week, and every other spare moment is spent in workshops or the library or packing or ordering equipment. Fifty-percent appointment, my foot. Plus, every time I walk by my desk I get a nagging reminder that I'm not doing what I thought I'd be doing with this pre-trip three weeks, namely, working on the soil incubation research I started this summer and haven't yet completed. The incubator sits on my desk and looks accusatory. Frankly, I didn't sign up for this job so I could run around making photocopies for undergrads all day. I want to scout out Moorea as a potential site for my dissertation research, and so far I have learned exactly squat about the island. Haven't had time for any reading. And something tells me that I'm not going to get any of my own work done at all, now or later.

September 5: We're in Bodega Bay for a sort of trial run. We're taking the students through some field exercises of the sort they'll do in Moorea, giving them a crash course in marine and coastal environments. The students get to bond, and we get to look for behavior problems, idiosyncrasies, etc. So far they seem to be a good group-no apparent felons and a minimum of whining. it's my first-ever teaching experience, and I'm not too smooth. We go up on the bluffs above the lab to look at the plant communities, and I'm letting fly with my spiel about the physiological hardships of coastal life. Suddenly they start yelling, "Turn around!" and "We can't hear you!" I realize I've been addressing my comments to the Pacific Ocean. I'm in student mode, facing the subject of study. Teacher mode is facing the students. And when I look around at them, I am terrified. Some are twiddling grass stems, others are whispering to their neighbors. I'm fighting to be heard above the wind. Clearly I'm not being interesting enough. I can't think of how to get their full attention other than to wave my arms more. I'm also aware that I have a sheer cliff at my back and that a particularly athletic bout of arm-waving could send me to my death. That would get their attention, but not quite in the way I'm aiming for. Thank God when it's over. I know the vertigo I feel isn't from the cliff.

September 19: Finally! We're here! We arrived at the Gump Station this morning, thoroughly exhausted. The station, which was the residence of department store magnate Richard Gump before it was deeded to Cal in 198 1, is beautifully situated on the mouth of Cook's Bay, with views of Moorea's stunning cliffs on one side and turquoise lagoon on the other. We're staying in dorm rooms right at the water's edge. We have a day to unpack and then boom, right into a week of field trips around the island. Since the airport, Professor Jere Lipps, the faculty coordinator of the course, has been mumbling about "herding cats"-as in "getting you people to move anywhere is like herding cats." I suspect that the next week will give me ample experience as a catherd.

September 20: It's amazing what the students are asking me. I wonder if I had such confidence in the omniscience of TA'9s when I was an undergrad. They know I've never set foot on this island before, but the questions come nonstop nonetheless. What kind of tree is that? What's the name of that mountain? Is that the school bus? Where are those people going? Some give me pause: Is this a Third World country? Do the people hate the French? Is agriculture hurting the environment? It troubles me not to be able to answer their questions, but I suppose my job here is really supposed to be to help them find out the answers on their own.

September 21: Swam with whales today. Words fail.

September 24: I'm impressed with the students. They're a good bunch-smart, eager to learn, fun to be around. Today we came home from a field trip and, while the dinner crew was cooking, one student pulled out his oils and started painting a view of Mt. Mouaputa, another made a set of pan pipes out of bamboo he'd collected on the trip, and a few others sat down to weave shells into hemp necklaces and bracelets while they sang to a student's guitar. Par for the course for a talented group of Berkeley kids. Especially the hemp.

September 25: OK, field trips are over and now it's time for the students to buckle down and start work. The idea is that each student will design and carry out an individual research project-anything from anemones to zebrafish. The job of the TA'9s particularly after the faculty leave, will be to help guide the students through their research. I wish I felt like I could be much help. In some things-experimental design, statistics, the scientific method-I know I can help them avoid costly errors. But for many of the students' projects I feel I just don't know enough about the topic. I've never identified a sponge species or tried to keep an octopus alive in a tank. All my experience has been on land and with organisms that stay where you leave them. My first deadly realization of this came today when I went out with Kathleen, who needed to measure a big coral growth in about six feet of water. We couldn't set the meter stick on the coral because it would float away. Oh, no problem, I told her we'll just hold it above the coral. I was struggling to figure out what was wrong when I heard a sound very like a fish choking. It was Kathleen, hooting into her snorkel at the very realization I was just coming to-now we were floating away! File away for future reference: Measuring things in water is unlike measuring them on land.

September 30: Little courtesies are disappearing as we get to know each other better. Before, it was always, "Could you wake up so-and-so? He's late for grocery duty," and, "Could you make an announcement that everyone should be sure to wash their own breakfast dishes?" Forget announcements. Now they just pick up the offending utensil and howl, "Hey! I saw that! Come back and wash your stupid cup!"

October 3: Gave a lecture on statistics today. God, I was dreading it. Probably not more than the students were, though. There's something incongruous about talking about statistics in the tropical heat, feeling the whir of ceiling fans overhead and gazing out at an unbearably blue lagoon just outside the classroom. But at the end of the two hours the students applauded. I was a little taken aback. Maybe just surprised that they weren't leaping from the room. The applause sounded sincere, not desultory. A beautiful sound-I can hear it still.

October 5: Gave a lecture on statistics today. God, I was dreading it. Probably not more than the students were, though. There's something incongruous about talking about statistics in the tropical heat, feeling the whir of ceiling fans overhead and gazing out at an unbearably blue lagoon just outside the classroom. But at the end of the two hours the students applauded. I was a little taken aback. Maybe just surprised that they weren't leaping from the room. The applause sounded sincere, not desultory. A beautiful sound-I can hear it still.

October 10: Ate some of Melanie's thesis today. She's supposed to be looking at human predation on the giant marine snail Trochus, which is considered a delicacy by Tahitians. We were out in the lagoon and met some of the aforementioned predators poling around in a canoe, and they graciously shared their catch with us. I'm not big on raw gastropods garnished with seawater; but since it will probably be my only chance to eat somebody's research animal, I gave it a shot. Mediocre. Unfortunately the encounter also more or less busted Melanie's thesis, since the Tahitians' method of hunting makes it difficult to figure out which snails are being eaten by humans and which by octopus. On the way back we discussed other options for her research project. All in a day's work.

October 14: 1 must try harder to remember what it was like to be 2 1. Also: try harder to smother laughter when the students act like 2 1 -year-olds. The poor kid who crashed the skiff into the dock was it his fault a lovely lass (the one we nicknamed "No Tan Lines") was sunbathing topless right next to the mooring line? And I suppose I should have more sympathy for the student I dragged from dreamland at 6:30 a.m., when I know he got in at 4 and was still wearing the shirt he went out in last night. What really bothers me is that I don't know their slang. I'm only 7 or 8 years older, but it makes me feel like an old fogey to have to ask them what it means. Even worse, I've started to pick it up, just from force of repetition. The first time I said something good was "the bomb"-it just slipped out, I swear-I thought I'd die. If I'm not careful I'll wake up one day and find "phat," "dope," "agro," and "burly" part of my permanent vernacular.

October 17: 1 confess-I have favorites. I know I shouldn't, but it , s hard when you get to know students this well. In any group of 25 people you're forced to live, eat, and work with, inevitably there are some you love, some you tolerate, and some you would cheerfully strangle. Luckily I only have a couple in the strangle category. But a TA is officially neutral, and I'm trying, I really am. My litmus test is this: Before I turn down a student's request, I ask myself, Would I say no if it were one of my favorites asking? It wouldn't be so bad if the students hadn't learned to play the three of us TA'9s off each other like a couple of divorced parents-if they don't get the answer they're looking for from one, they try another.

October 26: By now we're settling into a routine, and Moorea feels like home. But there can still be unexpected moments. Last night I went out to collect plankton with a student, Sarah, and another TA, Amy. We were out on Cook's Bay on a moonless night with the whole vault of the sky above us, reflecting the stars in the still water. We'd chug along slowly in the skiff, towing the plankton net, then stop, and look at the stars for a while, and talk, and then Amy and Sarah would haul in the net, full of microscopic plankton gleaming with phosphorescence. Every touch, every ripple in the net produced a streak of light. It felt as though we'd skimmed the stars off the surface of the water. We stayed out for hours, never tiring of the magic of it, and I remember thinking: This is the very best profession on earth.

October 28: Vincent Resh, one of the Berkeley faculty members in charge of the course, is here this week. Last night he made dinner for the students. It was a hoot. He seated them all at tables with candles and wine glasses, then had all the TA'9s and visiting faculty play waiter-towel over the arm and the whole bit-and serve the students their individual "orders." They got a huge kick out of it. The personal contact with faculty is one of the great assets of this class. Most Berkeley undergrads probably don't get this much face time with profs in their whole career. I hope when I'm a professor (if I'm ever a professor, if I ever get a Ph.D., if I ever get any research done, oh anxiety!) I'll still like undergrads enough to make such a gesture.

October 30: OK, I'm ready to get out of here. The students are driving me nuts. Smart is not the problem. Science is not the problem. The projects are going swimmingly. The problem is that the students are finally discovering the delights of Moorea, and since the TA'9s are in charge of the vehicles, we have to organize their social calendars and schlep them all over the island. Today I drove people around looking for, of all things, Halloween decorations. The students are throwing a big party and want it to look authentic and impress the locals. I tried to convince them that there are no paper skeletons to be had in French Polynesia. Still, we had to look in at every two-bit shop from Pao Pao to Vaiare. Talk about herding cats. Strangle factor hit an all-time high. By the time I got back to the Gump Station my jaw hurt from clenching it, and I was thinking, "For this, I'm getting a Ph.D.?" But tomorrow we'll have the stupid party and then I can take my week off and go do my research. I don't feel prepared for my fieldwork; I've hardly had a moment to think about my research. The students have taken up so much of my time. But I suppose every TA faces this dilemma at one point or another-choosing between doing right by the students and doing right by yourself. There's really only one choice you can make.

November 1: 1 love the students again. They are the bomb. They put on a hell of a Halloween party. Somehow they managed to find tortillas locally and make their own chips and salsa. I was knocked out by the decorations, too. They were so creative, carving local squash for jack o' lanterns, turning Kleenex into ghosts, even making one of our volleyball posts into a scarecrow. The Tahitian guests loved it.

November 10: 1 guess I've learned a little something about teaching by now. Lesson 1: If you assign people to small groups to do work, don't leave the room. Lesson 2: It's unfair, but the students who do the poorest work get most of your time. The good students take care of themselves. Lesson 3: Don't be afraid to show you don't know everything. Attempting to brazen it out is a good way to have some sharp-as-a-tack Berkeley student humiliate you in front of the whole class. I won't say I learned Lesson 3 the hard way. Actually, that was one I knew already. But after tonight I may have to add a corollary, which is Lesson 3b: It's best to know everything before you get up in front of sharp-as-a- tack Berkeley students. I was doing a lecture on plant morphology and got mixed up between two plant parts, which, the students pointed out, looked very alike in my lousy drawings. I said, "OK, I'm blanking on this, but I'll look it up and get back to you tomorrow." That was all it took. They smelled blood and they attacked. Five or six hands went up, all supported by different opinions about the actual difference between the two parts. I kept trying to drag the discussion back by saying "Let's move on," but they had me on the run and they knew it. Ultimately everyone put in their two cents, and I was able to reclaim the class and move on. Thank goodness none of these people will be on my orals committee.

November 18: Two days before departure, and some students are madly finishing up, while others have finished and are already writing up their results. I'm so proud of the students. They have learned so much, changed so much. I have learned and changed, too. I've learned I like teaching. Love it, in fact. I see now how teaching this class has kept people like Vincent Resh young. I see how much fun it is to watch the light go on in students' eyes when they finally get what you're trying to explain. I see what it's like to stand in front of a class and watch heads nod and mouths smile and hands write. And I see what I'm really aiming for in getting my Ph.D.-finding a way to keep doing this forever.

Virginia Matzek '92, former associate editor of the Monthly, in March won an Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor Award for her work in Moorea.