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)

You're right. By now I should find a specific topic and dig into it. I believe I'm onto it. As the department requires us to do the first two papers in distinct subfields, I'm trying to approach this topic from different angles and exploring different methods. In addition to this, I do hope though, I can learn knowledge from other related fields like computer science or cognitive science and be able to do some more exploratory and innovative work one day. Some of the knowledge cannot be learned with a simple textbook and best if there's someone leading you into it. But it is true that coursework is not the only way and the most efficient way. There are many other ways to achieve this goal.

It's not all grad courses though. usually 2(-3) grad course plus 2(-3) math/CS/STAT classes. We need to finish the course work within 3 years (in fact 2 years) so I can only stuff more classes within each semester to make it work.

Yes this might be the issue.. I feel bitter about the heavier TA jobs because I think it eats my time for classes and research. We are required to take at least 3 courses while teaching, and the graduate school has this policy that you can't take classes after the third year (we're required to graduate within 5 years, which is good but still stressing). The first year is for core courses so not many other courses can get in (but I did take 3-4 extra courses/seminars together with the 6 core courses exactly as you said..). We need to take four advanced level ling classes so the middle two years just feel too short to learn all the things I want and fully prepare myself for academia. To me is like this: taking class can help with my research; doing research can help me get a job; but doing TA is only for money and not helpful for my job seeking, but I have to work more than others to get the same money (and the language department is not considerate about your time on research at all. They just want you to work more). So it adds up to this break out. I feel less confident if I don't have as many as skill sets and research work as others when I will be applying for the job. You're right I'm pushing myself too much, but I don't know if there is a "easier" way to be more competitive and survive the academia...

I'm still in the process of learning how to do research and yes it's slow for now. It's a relatively new area for me and I'm shifting to more comp-wise research so a lot of programing to learn too. I'm also taking four to five classes a semester and auditing more. I do all this to try to explore different topics/subfields using different methods in my graduate study so that I will be able to do various research efficiently when I graduate (I know there is a debate on whether you should focus on one thing and do a series of studies on it or do different things. Our department requires us to work on distinct subfields for our first two papers, so that's what I'm trying to accomplish here. But ultimately I think I can subsume my research under one big topic). I didn't see why now it's hard for me necessarily mean I'm not suitable for academia. You are right the workload should decrease as I teach the classes more times, although for now I was assigned different classes every semester. I guess at the end of my fourth year, both the research and teaching will become smoother for me. This is a panic post made at this particular time. Things can get better, with improvement of myself and maybe occasional assignment of some less heavy jobs.

Trying to get a promise to TA a linguistics course (or whatever courses that cost less time) at least once is what I'm trying to achieve right now by "complaining". Since you mentioned that I might risk bringing it up too often or in inappropriate situations, I might use the wrong word of "complaining". I only express my concern to our chair that it might take over too much of my time for research in my defense semester and she totally agreed with that. We're working together to negotiate with the language department to see if I can be assigned a class that I've taught before. I didn't mention anything about the fairness or throw doubt about the department decision. I get it that the content of TA may not matter to the research or job seeking. But my focus is not on this; it's on that it takes me (us) more time than the norm in our department and it may be going on for all the three years if I do nothing and just bear with it. It's solvable, maybe not by giving me another position this semester, but by giving me more priority on a ling class or any class that costs less time when assigning TA next year. I totally understand the difficulty of the department. Last time I talked with my chair, she gave me basically the same thing you told me today. It's nice to hear it from another source again though. I explicitly said I understand I was not mistreated. It does not conflict with the idea that it's unfair and "complaining" may make the things better in the future for me and others in the same situation (including those who teach a non-native language)

We actually have non-natives to teach a language. They don't usually get three years of language teaching in a roll, but the semester(s) they do teach the language, it can get very stressful. The department indeed is trying their best, but complaining can (maybe) improve this situation in later years and for future students. At least they may take more consideration when recruiting students, and don't just assign students to a language department automatically because they are easier to get.

You're right. The more relevant positions do not help with one's research directly. But my advisor always encourages his students to TA for intro class for the subfield I'm in and every year one of his students did get this job. It suggests at least it benefits somehow to our research, our teaching experience or our understanding of the field. Indeed the workload varies depending on the language one teaches. Again, the professors are aware that in general language instructors spend more time than linguistics instructors. A few professors asked me about it and complained with me. My advisor even explicitly told me to be sloppy about the classes, spending as little time as I can, although it's not easy when you're teaching 6 classes. And I imagine I will be more willing to spend time if I'm TAing linguistics because I do love it and want the student to love it too.

Thanks for the understanding. We got a small group of us that face the same problem. We discuss it among ourselves, make complaints to the chair or even to the graduate school, but this is not done as a organized group. Maybe the students should have something like this in the future. The department does know the situation, but with very limited resources, they may have no alternatives. Unfortunately, the language jobs are not within our department. We are assigned to other language departments and they are the ones who decide our jobs and workload. Our department has no influence over their decisions. That's probably one of reasons why we have to work more hours (even our chair said they are kind of exploitive). So it's impossible to balance the workload among students by the way you proposed. What they can try to achieve is to assign fewer language jobs to a particular student or a particular group of students, and let other students do some writing seminar classes. Like I said, teaching 1 semester of language per year or at most 4 for the whole 6 semester is acceptable. (But even this is not without restrictions.

Yes I've heard a lot of these horror stories... I also know that many of other programs can't guarantee 5 years of funding and their students have to find TA jobs by themselves in their dissertation year. One can say that it's already unfair that my program supports students for 5 years while others can't, or students in other programs need to work even longer. But on the other hand, I worked hard to come to the current program with the knowledge that I will be guaranteed for full fundings and be able to devote more time to my research, but the reality is that I'm among the minority who are given things slightly different from our expectations, and these unfairness is not due to our incapability but our capability. I guess frustration is natural, but I'm not planning to spend too much time on complaining things or forcing the department do anything. I will take what I have now (but still it's good to make yourself heard, I guess).

Thanks! Again it's good to know that the workload is normal among graduate students. I'm not saying I don't ever want to teach language. I'm ok with teaching it 1 semester a year, or 4 for the whole 6 semesters, but 3 consecutive years are too much. And 20h teaching in the 2nd semesters of the 2nd and the 3rd year when we are required to take at least 4 classes and produce a publishable paper at the same time is not a easy job. Other people who teach linguistics classes for 3 years also have the skill sets that can put them in writing seminars, but some of them just never get the heavier jobs. As I said, the department recognizes it as a problem, but they still assign some of us to years of language teaching because they are easier TA jobs to find for the students (and yes other TA jobs are really hard to find and it's not that the department is not fighting for it for us). I guess what I can do now is comforting myself with what I heard from the forum that I'm not in the worst situation. I still think it's not fair for some students but can only hope this can happen less for future students...