I missed the Kerry speech helping out students with the current 312 assigment. TAing is shaking my self-confidence in both directions very violently. Dealing with the fact that some particular student doesn't understand some particular issue has one of two effects, and both have come up pretty often today alone. On the one hand, it's good to see sometimes that hey, I actually understand stuff that is somewhat hard to get . On the other hand, there are the many moments abject terror where I'm trying to explain something and suddenly realize I don't actually know what I'm talking about and I need to figure out really quickly what the right thing to say is. I've felt traditionally good about that panicking-pressured feeling getting me towards the right answer quickly in, like, a test-taking situation, but in front of people I'm not so good yet.