For my first entry, I will begin with a quote:
Anger makes you smaller, while forgiveness forces you to grow beyond what you were.
-Cherie Carter-Scott
This i should keep in mind as a graduate student. Always at the forefront of my mind. Why do you ask? Because I constantly want to choke people. Below is a letter I would like to write to the people in the main office about my Graduate Assistant work:
Dear People who I am forced to be with too much of the time,
As you are probably somewhat aware, I generally keep about three hours each week in the main office where I am at my cubicle. I typically go in, ask the secretary if she has department stuff for me to do (to which she normally says no) so I just sit down, open up my laptop, do any TA things that have come up since that morning, and then move onto coursework until my class. I always remind the secretary that if she needs extra help throughout the week to email me. I have come in on extra occasions to do departmental stuff.
Several times I've had faculty or other students come up and ask me if I can do GA stuff for them. That is the reason why I am there for 3 hours, because that is time I have dedicated to the department if they need my help in addition to my TA work. (They said that I needed to have a set time to help out, and the secretary thought three hours would be good, with additional hours as scheduled). What bothers me is the comments that other students and professors make about how I have chosen to use my time. Normally I get comments that say "you're not doing GA work" or "you're doing you own work/classwork." These typically aren't in the light joking sense (sometimes they are) but sometimes they border on being semi-accusatory, as if the professor or student has caught me "cheating" on my time sheet.
This only bothers me because I spend alot of time on my assistantship. I check the course at least twice a day to answer student questions or do any required tasks. It often goes over 10 hours a week, which is fine with me. Any work I do additionally for the department (some photocopying I did a few weeks ago) is often over my hours. It's in my job description to answer student questions and address the course needs when they come up- I am not going to wait to answer all of my questions once or twice a week while I sit on my ass in the department.
I have a nice suggestion for you people. Next time you tell me I'm not doing GA work, I am going to let you do MY work as a TA for a week. Yes, all 23 hours that I normally do while I get paid for ten. I'll let you teach the poor students who feel like they've been stranded on the dessert island of online courses by the department how to zip their files or make a webpage. I'll let you break up student fights that happen on collaborative team projects. I'll let you take the occasional 2am panicked phone call. I'll let you have eight hours of face to face meetings. I'll even let you deal with emails about grading and how they want to kill the professor and the GA as well for the grade they got, despite the fact that I, as a GA, do not grade things!
Then I'll tell you you're not doing any GA work, and watch you cry.
Thank you,
Your GA Slave.
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