mini monkey

You're not going to like what I have to say. You are not being over-worked, although, yes, you are at the high end of what they can ask of you. You may not enjoy it, but no one promised you that you would. Your department is trying to do everything it can to guarantee everyone funding, and since I assume there aren't enough courses in linguistics to go around, they have to have some students doing language teaching. Obviously, language teaching has to be done by those who can do it, so that means international students do more of that and English speakers do the other courses. If they gave you all linguistics courses, someone else would be stuck without funding altogether. It's the department's responsibility to make sure that doesn't happen, even if it sucks for you. It'd suck even more for someone else if they didn't get a stipend and couldn't afford to pay rent anymore.
I assume that this is something that you could have easily found out about ahead of time if you had talked to current students about their TA experiences before accepting your offer. So yes, this is one place where you could have been more proactive to maybe save yourself this trouble, or at least be aware of it going in. Knowing as much as possible about a situation before getting yourself into it is always good advice. But now that you're in it, I think you need to accept it and do your best to work with what you've got, which, at the end of the day, isn't all that bad in my opinion.
Course prep is time-consuming, so I would concentrate on improving your life on that front. I'm sure this is not the first time Language X is being taught at your school, aren't there materials around to be inherited from others? Maybe they can put you in touch with previous instructors or you could initiate a materials-sharing setup. Another, more realistic, request you could make of your chair is to be assigned the same courses next year as this, to massively save on course prep. FWIW, though, course prep will now and forever be a major time suck, if you want to be in academia. Best two strategies for dealing with that are what I suggested above: inherit materials from others and reduce new course preps as much as possible. This will be a useful life skill.
Finally, for the good news: assuming you want to go on the academic job market, no one will care about the courses you TAed. Having 1-2 courses in linguistics is enough, combined with your other teaching experience. I would even guess that you could have no linguistics classes and do ok. If you apply for jobs in language departments, you'll probably even have an advantage. You'll need to write a teaching statement, but that's not about the content of the courses you TAed as much as about your teaching philosophy. Your experience will allow you to have informed opinions and specific examples about designing classes, prepping materials, your approach to learning, and all the other usual stuff that goes in a statement. A school will hire you because you are an expert in X, you are whatever else they are looking for, and because they think you'll be a decent teacher, as reflected by evaluations, letters, statement, job talk, and teaching demo (if you give one). They will assume you can prep courses you've never taught before, because TAing for a course is not the same as teaching it, and either way you most likely will be prepping courses you've never taught before. All you'll need to have are informed opinions about how you'd teach relevant courses in your field, you don't have to have actually taught/TAed them in the past. 

I was in a CVS getting antibiotics with my boyfriend, who had strep, when I got my first acceptance. It was kind of embarrassing because I immediately started crying and jumping up and down. He started crying too, so everyone was just kind of staring at us. Then I called my parents and told them. My mom was in the grocery store, and she started crying. It was way more public than I would have liked, but also it was one of the best feelings ever. 

It was February 1, and I had been checking my email every 5 minutes. My professors were making fun of me... every 10 minutes or so they'd say "oh, it's been 30 seconds! better check your e-mail!" I had already gotten a pretty good offer from Boulder so I don't know why I was still checking...
And then one left the room and the other stood up for a Kleenex, and I pulled out my phone. "Ah yes, it's been almost 20 whole seconds! You had better check!" he said. And of course, that's when I got the email from Cornell. Both of my professors and I were jumping up and down
 

I was in class (I'm still in undergrad) when I got my first email. There were about 10 minutes left, so I just kind of sat there dazed. As soon as it was over, I walked straight to my car so I could sob in relief. 

I was at home, and the acceptance was from my dream university. I thought I had no chance whatsoever of getting on. I was sitting on the couch watching youtube  videos when the email came in. I proceeded to run around the apartment aimlessly. I called my mom, and started sobbing hysterically. My boyfriend came back from work 20 minutes later to find me in the fetal position on the floor sobbing. Haha. Every now and then I break out sobbing because I still can't believe it...

I was at home, and the acceptance was from my dream university. I thought I had no chance whatsoever of getting on. I was sitting on the couch watching youtube  videos when the email came in. I proceeded to run around the apartment aimlessly. I called my mom, and started sobbing hysterically. My boyfriend came back from work 20 minutes later to find me in the fetal position on the floor sobbing. Haha. Every now and then I break out sobbing because I still can't believe it...

My POI at one university verified this. He said that even if he wants a student (biological anthropology) that it is up to everyone in the department and who is allowed to take students for that rotation.

Just FWIW, all of my SOPs were fully cited. When discussing the work that I was contributing to, the way others have looked at what I proposed to look at, etc., all of that was fully cited. I had 5+ pages of bibliography for my SOPs and none of the programs were bothered by that. This included work by members of the departments at each school I applied to as well. It's one thing to say "Prof. X's work is relvelent to my topic" it's another thing to show them that you've actually read something by the people you're applying to work with.

I don't agree. 5 pages of bibliography (single spaced) seems like quite a lot for a 2 page (single spaced) document. If you are citing with particular regularity, and if you did indeed cite for each professor you'd like to work with (about 4 per program, 1-2 citations each), I imagine it would break up the text structurally/visually and potentially make it look like you were compensating for not reading their work by using information available on Google Scholar. I mean, I'm not in a PhD program, but I do edit academic writing for a living and have published some of my own, and I know that the SOP shouldn't look like a lit review. It seems to me there is a difference between "fully cited" and citing too much. I think you can talk about, say, the methodological power of ethnography and not cite Malinowski, just as I think you can talk about discipline without citing Foucault. 
 
Perhaps I misinterpreted your use of "fully cited," but I know it is easy to get carried away with citations in a literal sense (being too thorough) and symbolic (check out all the stuff I know). 

Hello again, everyone. Sorry I haven't been on in a while; things have been very busy. Today I received an update from two universities. Here are the final results for all the ones I applied to:
 
1. Purdue- Rejected.
2. SIUC- Accepted. Will be attending.
3. CWU- Accepted. Appears I got off the waitlist. 
4. California State University at Northridge- Accepted.
 
I'll be sending out emails to CWU and CSUN to let them know that I am declining their offers. Hope this helps someone! 

Hello again, everyone. Sorry I haven't been on in a while; things have been very busy. Today I received an update from two universities. Here are the final results for all the ones I applied to:
 
1. Purdue- Rejected.
2. SIUC- Accepted. Will be attending.
3. CWU- Accepted. Appears I got off the waitlist. 
4. California State University at Northridge- Accepted.
 
I'll be sending out emails to CWU and CSUN to let them know that I am declining their offers. Hope this helps someone! 

Hello again, everyone. Sorry I haven't been on in a while; things have been very busy. Today I received an update from two universities. Here are the final results for all the ones I applied to:
 
1. Purdue- Rejected.
2. SIUC- Accepted. Will be attending.
3. CWU- Accepted. Appears I got off the waitlist. 
4. California State University at Northridge- Accepted.
 
I'll be sending out emails to CWU and CSUN to let them know that I am declining their offers. Hope this helps someone! 

PhD students are more important. Get over it please.

I feel like I'm the odd one out, haha! I have four pet dogs and two pet turtles, but the dogs technically belong to my parents. Instead of spending money on room and board, I decided to live with my parents during my undergraduate years. 
 
The turtles are all mine. I've been on my own before (studying abroad in Australia), but I feel like this time around with a greater coursework load in grad school and relocating to the middle of nowhere I need some sort of social support. I can't take any of the dogs because my parents are really attached to them; I'd feel guilty taking them away from this nice environment. They'll be better off here with such a nice yard and warm weather! 
 
I currently live in a nice warm area and my turtles love to sun bask on hot days, but I'm now moving to a cold state. I was originally thinking of re-homing my turtles, but I decided against it because I would like some sort of pet to distract me / keep my stress levels down when times get tough. I plan on purchasing a larger tank, a high-quality heater, and a nice basking rock to make them comfortable. I'm also going to buy turtle food in bulk just in case I can't find a pet store around me. I'll order the rest online if need be. 
 
Turtles are much less of a commitment in my opinion because yes I do need to feed them, monitor their health, etc. but don't require the amount of play as a dog would. That and my schedule might be irregular. It's comforting knowing that if I can't make it home in time that my turtles will be fine and will be warm, fed (auto feeder), etc. I would love to own a dog, but I don't feel comfortable doing so until I see what my schedule is like. For now, I'm happy with my turtles.  

Decided on Chicago. MA at half tuition. I couldn't wait any longer, plus it's really where I wanted to go all along. 

OP sounds like an ass and I am a Type A Harvard-bound PhD student.

I wish you the best of luck Forsaken! Sending good vibes your way! You got this!!!  
 
I am also not fond of the "unofficial" waitlists. I was put on one as well for one of the schools I applied to. I was told that they would eventually contact me during the 'second wave' of acceptances to see how the "official" waitlist is. I would also like to know what the differences are between the official and unofficial. 

Good morning everyone!
 
I've been lurking for some time but finally decided to make an account. 
 
 
 
In response to ecologaia: I have visited Chapel Hill many times. It's a beautiful area! I actually live ~3 hours away from there, but it's the go-to area for the college students in NC for vacationing. You're going to love it.
 
 
 
As for admissions status: I haven't read this entire thread yet, so maybe someone already posted my results from these universities. But for my MA:
 
1. Purdue University: Admissions Denied. It looks like there was funding complications that prevented them from taking too many students in. I see that one lucky Ph.D. student got in, though! Congrats!
 
2. SIU Carbondale: Admissions Accepted! I've already accepted their admissions offer. I will be studying Biological Anthropology and focusing on Primatology there. 
 
3. CWU: It appears that I have been waitlisted... but seeing that many have already accepted admissions here, it's assumed that it will be a no. This was a back-up university. 
 
4. California State University Northridge: This was another back-up school and they take applications late (deadline is today, actually). I'm not worried about the results of this or CWU.
 
If I do get an offer from CWU or CSUN I will be declining. Hopefully if that's the case it will help someone out. 
 
 
My focus is Primatology, specifically the great apes (gorillas > orangs > chimpanzees > bonobos > gibbons/siamangs). It's nice to meet all of you!

Good morning everyone!
 
I've been lurking for some time but finally decided to make an account. 
 
 
 
In response to ecologaia: I have visited Chapel Hill many times. It's a beautiful area! I actually live ~3 hours away from there, but it's the go-to area for the college students in NC for vacationing. You're going to love it.
 
 
 
As for admissions status: I haven't read this entire thread yet, so maybe someone already posted my results from these universities. But for my MA:
 
1. Purdue University: Admissions Denied. It looks like there was funding complications that prevented them from taking too many students in. I see that one lucky Ph.D. student got in, though! Congrats!
 
2. SIU Carbondale: Admissions Accepted! I've already accepted their admissions offer. I will be studying Biological Anthropology and focusing on Primatology there. 
 
3. CWU: It appears that I have been waitlisted... but seeing that many have already accepted admissions here, it's assumed that it will be a no. This was a back-up university. 
 
4. California State University Northridge: This was another back-up school and they take applications late (deadline is today, actually). I'm not worried about the results of this or CWU.
 
If I do get an offer from CWU or CSUN I will be declining. Hopefully if that's the case it will help someone out. 
 
 
My focus is Primatology, specifically the great apes (gorillas > orangs > chimpanzees > bonobos > gibbons/siamangs). It's nice to meet all of you!