What is a TA?

A TA (teaching assistant) is a student at the university who has been assigned the task of assisting the instructor. Typically, a TA is responsible for running a lab and grading assignments. TAs also hold office hours where they can give you individual help on assignments or course material.

The most important responsibility of the TA is to grade the style of your code. When you run your code you can test and see if it is correct, but you may not be using good style. If you lose style points, be sure you understand why so you can avoid doing so in the future.

Note particularly what TAs are not:

TAs are not tutors. They are not paid to help you accomplish what you wish; they are paid to help the instructor accomplish course goals. Sometimes those two things are similar, and sometimes they are not.

TAs are not supposed to debug your programs. The instructor teaches you to do that in class, and the TA will help you with debugging strategies, but the TA is not responsible for finding your errors. If you follow ALL of the TA's suggested strategies for locating a bug and still cannot locate it, the TA will forward the mystery to the instructor.