My demonstration ends

Today marked the last time I take part in any university demonstrating. It's quite sad as it was an excellent experience going back into the same labs that used to scare me so much as an undergrad. Actually knowing what was going on and how the experiments worked made them seem sooooo easy compared to the first time through, when you'd run off the find a demonstrator if your reaction looked even vaguely different from those around you. I remember not having a clue what was going on and essentially following a recipe to get my products rather than trying to understand the chemistry. I remember the demonstrators being not much cop too. If you asked them a question they'd just tell you the answer with no attempt to try to get you to understand of help you out so you'd know what to do next time. Memories of the evil Darren Holling telling us that if we didn't use the vacuum pump correctly it'd blow our legs off still haunt me. So I made a concerted effort to try to get the students to understand what they were doing. On a few rare occasions you could actually see them understanding a concept and it was such a good feeling to think that you had actually got through to them. Of course, most of the timee they'd nod as you explained things to them fully knowing that they weren't taking it in at all.
Sdaly, my last shift was for a spectroscopy workshop in which most people were doing an assessment and didn't need/weren't allowed any help so I spent most of the time sat talking to the other demonstrator. It's definately something I'll miss (especially the £9.57/hr that came with it)