tajob

I'm not disagreeing with you about all the interdisciplinary stuff, but for me my topic is more appropriately approached using multiple methods (it's relevant for 4-5 subfields. Not that I'm exploring or interested in them all but I do need to know something in the other subfields to pursue my path of research). Maybe that's one of the reasons I chose it at the first place. And being interdisciplinary or using multiple methods doesn't mean I'm all over the place. As I said, the class I'ven been taking for now are useful or necessary for my research and is driven by the research needs (admittedly I'm thinking of learning things that are more distant from what I'm doing now. I'm dropping off this idea as I talked through this thread). Again, I will think about it that how should I spend my time more efficiently on the topic. As we are required to do two research in two distinct subfields for our first two papers, we have to change our advisors at least once during the 5 years. So I'm not in the risk of losing my advisor, although I sincerely think the chance he doesn't get the job is thin. My another advisor is tenure. And she's one of the leaders in the field promoting breaking boundaries between subfields and even fields and incorporating methodology from other fields. Maybe our area (or part of the area) is just more open to such ideas. (And we don't need to have published papers to become a professor, although definitely it's more competitive to do so. I get your point that we should focus on research. But this may point to some difference between fields)

I don't have real data point obviously, I only talked to colleagues in our departments and friends in others, so my argument can always be argued to be shaky. Language teachers usually teach more sessions (6 vs. 1~2) than TA for intros. The preparation time can vary, depending on how many days you are teaching (e.g. 3 days means 3 days prep. Intro TAs usually have fixed days, but language TA will be assigned depending on one's own schedule and other teachers' schedule. 2-4 days is the norm) and whether one has access to previous materials. My supervisor personally doesn't like much about we sharing materials taught before. She encouraged us to prepare our own materials and rehearse every step of the class before each class. I didn't follow strictly her recommendations, but it still takes more time than most of the friends I talked to. Assignment is about 4 per week. Some intros only have 1 for 2-3 weeks. Besides, even within teaching languages, time could vary. First years language teaching is the worst. I taught second year for 1 semester. The prep time was about half of that for the 1st year. But for some reason I was always assigned to the first year. I was told that it's because the supervisor prefers people with more standard accent to teach the 1st year. I'm not the worst though. People teaching non-native languages could go even higher in prep time, although they normally don't teach languages for all the three years. And we have a student who was asked to design and teach classes (native speaker of that language) all by her own, and for three years. She literally has no time for her research and classes. I don't know why this has not been properly addressed. But there may be no point comparing. People just vary in their time and efforts in TAing classes. If I really want I guess I can be sloppy about the class as my advisor recommended, and do much less than currently. I feel bad about this though. But I'll do some weighting...

I probably should talk to my advisor how he gets where he is. To me, his research is all over the place, has broad interest, and is even taking classes every now and then to learn new stuff (he's an assistant professor, admittedly, but I don't see any reason why he can't get the tenure position in 1-2 years). He doesn't tell me explicitly to go take classes, but I may be mimicking him without knowing. It seems to be a trend in our field for new scholars to know more things outside the field, and produce interdisciplinary research, either by working with other experts, or doing one's own research. Besides I'm not learning for the sake of knowledge itself. I learn things that helps me get a better understanding of the field and push the field forward by integrating every bit of my knowledge in my research. But I do know I should concentrate on small areas and should figure out my priority. (despite that I said I'm frustrated about "concentration", I do really focus on one not to big topic, and try to converge to it through my different research with various methods and perspectives, to the extend that sometime I'd be worry about my concentration is so small that nobody outside of my small area cares about or knows it). Why there should be a universal philosophy about graduate school and academia? I do want to work in academia, with my own reason. I want to pursue knowledge and explore the unknown by myself. If academia job can carry me there, then academia job suits me. If it is not, I may figure out something else, or decide whether I should fix my attitude and goal. This is what I'm trying to figure out through my graduate study. It's my second year, and I'm glad that I had this conversation in this forum to help me re-examine this issue at a early stage. It may be efficient to do as what senior students or researchers tell us to do in order to pursue an academia job. But there might be another way, a longer way. In the end it always has to be me who figure it out for myself.

Thanks for your understanding. There might be a way out for this time. I'm trying to convince the language department to give me a class that I taught. The chance is small but hope there will be good news. Finger crossed.

Thanks for sharing your experience. I too have ups and downs. These two days may be the downs (maybe because of the defense coming in two weeks ) but most of time I'm enjoying the process. I've been to school counseling before. They helped me walk through a period when I was really low. I feel ok now, but I'll keep in mind they could be a source of help. I think I'll talk to my colleagues and advisors first.

Thanks. But I have to admit that I'm a bit frustrated about "graduate students should concentrate on one thing". I always know it's true but it's just easy to forget it with all the other overwhelming feelings. I'm sure most people who want to be in academia share with me the same enthusiasm of pursuing knowledge. It's hard to suppress the desire to know more and learn more; even harder is to suppress the anxiety of knowing that even people much more brilliant and hard-working than me may not find a job when graduate... But I'll gradually figure out how to deal with that.

My advisor know the classes I'm taking but didn't say much. He did encourage me not to take over 4 and learn stat/programming by myself (I did).

It's a real anxiety among the students not being able to find a job when graduated. It's a field that, as many other fields, has very few open positions, and does not have many relevant job outside of academia. Our program is not the best, but it's good enough. Still many students are trying to not only produce the best research, but also do everything we can to make ourselves more competitive. People in their third or fourth year are still taking Python to learn programming knowledge. I'm not sure now it's a problem of the field, our program or myself. But I'll be thinking about what I want from the graduate education.

I might doing slightly more than my peers (I didn't go as far as 6.. It's 4-5 and some auditing if I found the subject useful for my research. But I guess it's not a big difference), but it's not uncommon for our students to take 3-4 real classes and get a minor (mine will be a CS minor, if I finished the coursework. It will help to strengthen my computational profile)... Also, I realized that 20h TA may not be a big deal if I cut off some courses. That's what I might be doing next year to save my time for research (now we're talking about this, I'm surprised that last time I wrote to my chair saying I'm taking 4 courses, she did not rebut me...). But again it's not a problem I invented. A few of other students also have this problem and they are not less "resentful" than me, although not everyone of them are taking so many classes. I guess the most immediate environment affects you the most: when others are having less TA work while taking many classes and earning a minor too, you can't help but thinking why it's only me (well not only me) that suffer the unfairness.

We have minimum 3-course requirements with TA. I know a few people of my cohort are also taking 4 classes. I did spend too much time today on this thread. But it made me feel better. Thanks for your comment anyway.

I'm in my 4th semester right now but I get your point.. Frankly I'm taking classes to fulfill course requirements for a minor, thus these many classes. I don't know what's the norm of people spending on research per week. I'm doing 2-3 days of research, 2-3 days of classes, 2 days of teaching per week. Does this sound all right?

I see. Thanks for the insight! I feel much better now after talking through the whole thread. Thanks for all those who offered their opinions.

Thanks. The advise about not straddling is really solid. I'll think more of it as I study on. Just curious: many programs are asking students to do the qualifying papers from different subfields now? Or it suffices if they are just two distinct topics but can be within the same subfield? I remember several programs I did research in allow students to continue on one topic and develop them into the dissertation (I maybe remember it wrong...) At first I felt my program is a little peculiar, but they gave the reason that the employers were looking for linguists that have knowledge in more than one area. But now it seems that many programs are doing the same thing? Does this conflict with "clear specialty"? (I guess my topic is specific and board at the same time. It can be approached from several perspectives or even subfields, but it addresses a specific process in language)