dr. t

(1) Can be partially solved through an automatic cat feeder. Depending on what you buy, this can cover a trip up to a week. (2) I've never had a problem finding a place that will take cats. Even places that say they don't are usually flexible if you offer a bit more (~$300?) on your deposit. Dogs, on the other hand, are usually completely verboten.

I had not actually realized or remembered that OP is female, so the point is well taken.

So I think both perspectives are pretty useful, and that @Sigaba's approach has a lot to recommend it when dealing with complaints in general, even if you disagree with its application in this particular case. I've highlighted the above because it seems to me the key to the disagreement, i.e. what exactly is the power dynamic or disparity in the classroom. I think we can all agree on the fact that the (tenured) professor is at the top, but I'm not sure I subscribe to the suggestion that the TA has more power than the student. Yes, the TA has theoretical control over grades and disciplinary matters, but only insofar as they are an avatar for the professor. The question that every grad student asks of other grad students in my department before working with a new professor is "do they have their TAs' backs?" That is, if a student complains, will I be on my own against the administration? And the answer is usually yes; most professors want to save political capital for things that matter to them. In other words, in the modern university classroom, the disparities of power do not, as Sigaba suggests, favor the TAs, but rather the student. And this reality serves as the basis for @TakeruK's concern about student bullying.

1) Questions in English end with a "?". 2) The relationship between teachers and students is, surprisingly, a student-teacher relationship and not that of customer-client.

Who's defining what's useful? The answer here is: "you". I'm sure this is relevant to... something? Are you for real? Have you even done the basic level of reading on the neoliberal university and the corporatiziation of the academy that would allow you to contribute to this discussion? This has to be a troll account, right? This is actually true, though not in the way you seem to think.

You've put so much thought into copying and pasting, the original document's formatting still shows.

Did you have a question here? What do you want advice on?

Having a just cause is not enough. Your posts here focus on your obvious disgust at Sarah's manipulative and unethical behavior, but the way you chose to resolve the issue was entirely based in the hope that others would share this disgust. You didn't really consider that the people with the power to address the issues you raised might be at best disinclined to do so and at worse complicit in Sarah's behavior. As a consequence, your behavior, particularly how you talked about the problem in your community (as @St Andrews Lynx noted above) made it very easy for your professor to pass this off as two squabbling graduate students. Politics is the fine art of getting what you want. In many cases, as it would have been here, what you want is an ethical and just outcome. But achieving such an outcome often requires a great deal of (ethically ambiguous) finesse, since what you want is at odds with what someone else (Sarah, your professor) want. If you had been more deliberate and careful in this portion of your campaign, I think you would have been able to either marginalize or remove Sarah while keeping your position. As I said, none of us are trained for this, and few realize how important such skills are. This was an expensive lesson; don't let it go to waste.

Fight battles you can win, or at least not lose. This isn't one of those.

Or that if Sarah has been manipulating results to produce negatives, who says she isn't doing the opposite too? And that would blow back on the professor. When you have time and space, I would encourage you to reflect on how you handled this politically. My read is: not particularly well. Not that you should have - this isn't something we're trained explicitly for. But remember the lessons going forward.

I went to one of those high schools @knp mentioned - I was required to take 4 years of Latin or Greek. I chose Latin. At the time of my application, I'd taken another 4 years in my undergraduate and 2 in my MA. And this is all for a medieval history PhD. I also picked up a reading competency in French, Spanish, and German in ugrad, and I was far from an exceptional candidate. Even if you meet the minimum requirements, remember that they're just that - minimums. Most of the people you'll be competing against will far exceed them. So what do you do? Much of that depends on where you are in your program. If you're a Junior or Senior, I'm sorry to say the ship has pretty much sailed. Unless you're a savant, you don't have the time or the credits to acquire anything beyond a rudimentary understanding of the language, and MA programs are places to refine, not acquire, these sorts of language skills. You may be able to get an offer from a low-ranked school, but given the particularly poor state of the job market in this subfield, I could not in good conscience recommend you take it. If you're a Freshman or Sophomore, you may still have some time, but language needs to go at the top of your priority list. You're going to have to show that you make up in quality of knowledge what you lack in duration of study. You should aim to have a writing sample that makes extensive use of close analysis of primary source texts in the original language, and at least be able to cite secondary literature in one or two non-English languages. If you end up doing an MA, make sure that you take any proficiency tests your school offers. If you can get a LOR writer to gush about your Latin and Greek skills, do that. Good luck.

I don't see any way out of this. External circumstances or not, you kind of screwed yourself.

Why not take it pass/fail?

Yes.

If you pick the wrong schools, you will forever be blacklisted from all of academia and openly mocked by beggars in the street. (It's for schools to understand where they rank, don't sweat it)

Eeeeh. Sure, it's in the handbook, and formally, I'm sure that's the case. But informally, I really, really doubt it.

I would admit that my knowledge is not, of course, comprehensive, but I've only ever seen "safe spaces" used in one of two ways: the first as I've described, and the second as the caricature present in the UoC letter. In other words, the opposition to "safe spaces" does not define the term in the same way that those who advocate for them seem to have agreed on - indeed, those opponents seem to define it so that they actually have something to object to. If people want to debate what the term means, I'm excited for that conversation. But I haven't seen any such thing occurring, so I'm not about to go out and create a problem where one does not exist.

I think it really is that simple, if we circumscribe the term correctly. By my reading, the major problem with the UoC letter is that it misrepresents (to my mind, deliberately) what a safe space or a trigger warning is so that the authors might have a reason for opposing it. But contrary to the authors' strawman, having a safe space doesn't mean you can't bring a horrible racist to campus to give a speech every day. It does mean that the painting of that guy who owned the ancestors of a decent chunk of your student body can't stay up in those students' dorm. And so on.

To be clear, I would in no way advocate this. But that's not the same as an unforced disclosure. It depends, but I think it can be. It depends enough on individual dynamics that I would be very wary of doing it off the bat.

Do they? I feel like I watched the UoT absolutely master the media cycle when its graduate students went on strike the other year, for example. In fact, the UoT strike is one of my main reference points for my concerns over graduate students not really knowing how to play the game or having the institutional memory and experience to engage properly, and ending up with nothing to show for their efforts.

Since no one wants to talk about unions, how about UChicago coming out against safe spaces and trigger warnings? https://twitter.com/ChicagoMaroon/status/768561465183862785/photo/1 My own response is almost entirely in line with this post here: http://www.thetattooedprof.com/archives/650 To be honest, I'm somewhat wary of saying, as the author does, that I would change assignments based on a student's experiences. It necessarily implies that the texts I've chosen, texts which contain reproductions of the type of events that can be so emotionally and physically devastating, are not really necessary to the subject or concept I'm trying to teach. That, in effect, I'm using them for shock value or out of childish interest. But that does not mean I should not provide a student with all the relevant information they need to make the decision as to whether or not to take the course in the first place. As a consequence, it feels like the University of Chicago has taken a bold stand for intellectual freedom by (deliberately?) misunderstanding an important concept in order to make themselves feel edgy and important.

I don't think the overlap you postulate in the first paragraph is anywhere close to perfect. Yet even if they google, it remains substantially different than standing up before your class on the first day and saying, in effect, "Before we begin, it's important for you to know I'm not a real professor."

Tenures professors are occasionally edible but frequently poisonous.

Undergraduates are friends, not food!