TA Issue

Forum for the GRE subject test in mathematics.
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Jerry99
Posts: 17
Joined: Mon Dec 02, 2019 5:01 am

TA Issue

Post by Jerry99 » Fri Feb 18, 2022 7:08 pm

BTW, have anyone considered this problem seriously? I think TA would require a lot of work and energy. Based on my undergraduate experience at a state university, some undergrads are very proactive in arguing about each homework/assignment's grades and expect TA to teach them everything.
Last edited by Jerry99 on Fri Feb 18, 2022 7:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Weil98
Posts: 29
Joined: Tue Feb 16, 2021 3:03 pm

Re: TA Issue

Post by Weil98 » Fri Feb 18, 2022 7:39 pm

I think this shouldn't be an issue. It sounds harder than it really is. Also, it is good to interact with students; you teach and learn back.

fakeName
Posts: 23
Joined: Thu Jan 20, 2022 7:03 pm

Re: TA Issue

Post by fakeName » Fri Feb 18, 2022 8:06 pm

In my experience TAing as an undergraduate, when students are rude or insistent about grading changes, you basically just say "my assessment is final and I will not change it." Perhaps they'll complain to the professor, but in most cases they will agree with you assuming you've graded it correctly. Being firm works like, 99% of the time.

For students that expect you to teach them everything, I've never had that happen. I teach recitation and host OH, and often I'll stay over for a bit to help if students need it, but beyond that they're mostly on their own. I'm happy to answer questions of course but I'm not their tutor. I suppose they could request a meeting, but you're not their tutor and most professors should understand that you can't offer hour long private sessions to individual students regularly (excluding extenuating circumstances of course). In other words, this just isn't a big issue typically, albeit experiences may very.

clopensets
Posts: 21
Joined: Mon Jan 31, 2022 3:54 pm

Re: TA Issue

Post by clopensets » Fri Feb 18, 2022 8:06 pm

I was a TA as a Master's student. It's honestly not that bad. Most students are respectful of your time. And honestly if you are required to host office hours, it's nice when there are some regulars. Pretty hard to get serious work done on your own projects during that time. Might as well do something useful for the students.

I've also been a tutor. The thing to keep in mind is that you're not there to give students answers. If they are begging for answers or they are the student that argue about points all the time, sometimes you have to put your foot down. The professor should back you up if a student is being annoying.

A nice grading hack: always look through your stack of papers for a student who seems to know what they are doing. Base the answer key on that. Of course verify they are correct, but if they are getting right answers and the steps look general correct, you don't have bother come up with solutions for every problem. Also as the class progresses, if you have access to the grade book, you general know who's doing well so you can start looking at their work when you want a base line set of solutions. Once again, verify they are right. But if you try this, you'll see how much time this saves.

ijustwanttodomath
Posts: 42
Joined: Fri Feb 11, 2022 4:15 pm

Re: TA Issue

Post by ijustwanttodomath » Sat Feb 19, 2022 4:00 pm

It varies from campus to campus but TAing for the most part is fairly chill. I had some negative experiences during my MS since I somehow always had the students who probably would have been better off scheduling a visit with a therapist rather than unleashing their life stresses on me, but I also was teaching remedial math at a campus where most of the students come from poverty.

bigbang
Posts: 24
Joined: Tue Feb 22, 2022 5:12 am

Re: TA Issue

Post by bigbang » Thu Feb 24, 2022 1:51 am

Most schools expect TA work of at least 20 hours a week from Ph.D. candidates. For 5 days working week in the US, that settles to almost 4 hours per day. I am having a hard time digesting how Ph.D. students balance these many hours with their course work (till the second year), research component (even if nominal), and other activities (like meetings with advisors, attending seminars, etc.)!
Even if one is NOT expected to actually give 4 hours per working day but just 20 hours per week (by distributing hours over the weekends too), that still sounds difficult given people also have their personal stuff to do, including self-study or maybe some research, over the weekends.

Does someone have an opinion on this matter?
(Kindly feel free to correct me if I misinterpreted something in the TA duty thing)

MadMax
Posts: 16
Joined: Sat Mar 20, 2021 2:09 pm

Re: TA Issue

Post by MadMax » Thu Feb 24, 2022 2:38 am

bigbang wrote:
Thu Feb 24, 2022 1:51 am
Most schools expect TA work of at least 20 hours a week from Ph.D. candidates. For 5 days working week in the US, that settles to almost 4 hours per day. I am having a hard time digesting how Ph.D. students balance these many hours with their course work (till the second year), research component (even if nominal), and other activities (like meetings with advisors, attending seminars, etc.)!
Even if one is NOT expected to actually give 4 hours per working day but just 20 hours per week (by distributing hours over the weekends too), that still sounds difficult given people also have their personal stuff to do, including self-study or maybe some research, over the weekends.

Does someone have an opinion on this matter?
(Kindly feel free to correct me if I misinterpreted something in the TA duty thing)
For international students, it is ILLEGAL to work more than 20 hours per week on campus. Absolutely no school expects TA to work more than 20 hours. In fact, only toxic departments would expect TA to work close to this 20 hours time limit.

bigbang
Posts: 24
Joined: Tue Feb 22, 2022 5:12 am

Re: TA Issue

Post by bigbang » Thu Feb 24, 2022 3:53 am


For international students, it is ILLEGAL to work more than 20 hours per week on campus. Absolutely no school expects TA to work more than 20 hours. In fact, only toxic departments would expect TA to work close to this 20 hours time limit.
Ohhh I did not know that, thanks for your reply. Actually both the schools I have been accepted into till now have mentioned 20 working hours per week as a TA. So I thought that it was normal for schools to expect 20 working hours, and it seemed to me that the same might be quite challenging.

ijustwanttodomath
Posts: 42
Joined: Fri Feb 11, 2022 4:15 pm

Re: TA Issue

Post by ijustwanttodomath » Fri Feb 25, 2022 3:49 pm

bigbang wrote:
Thu Feb 24, 2022 1:51 am
Most schools expect TA work of at least 20 hours a week from Ph.D. candidates. For 5 days working week in the US, that settles to almost 4 hours per day. I am having a hard time digesting how Ph.D. students balance these many hours with their course work (till the second year), research component (even if nominal), and other activities (like meetings with advisors, attending seminars, etc.)!
Even if one is NOT expected to actually give 4 hours per working day but just 20 hours per week (by distributing hours over the weekends too), that still sounds difficult given people also have their personal stuff to do, including self-study or maybe some research, over the weekends.

Does someone have an opinion on this matter?
(Kindly feel free to correct me if I misinterpreted something in the TA duty thing)
Officially yes, you are "expected" to work 20 hours per week, but usually this includes time for office hours, prep time, grading, etc., so you aren't just spending 20 hours on your feet teaching necessarily. You're paid as a salary rather than tracking your hours like a normal part-time job. So some weeks there will be more work to do, others there will be substantially less. As long as the department you're in doesn't have ridiculous expectations, then you should be able to finish your coursework, work on research, and still have time for other activities. For what it's worth, I used to work about 30ish hours a week while doing my MS and still had time to excel in my courses, make significant progress on my thesis, and still participate in conferences and different activities :mrgreen:



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