TA schedules

[vam1390]

So, I was offered a full graduate assistantship, with the first year starting as a grader before moving on to a graduate associate. 

Those of you that have done this or are doing this, what did your schedules usually look like as a grader? I'm just trying to get an idea for planning out a part time job this fall.

[I_mix]

It really depends on what class you're grading for and what the assignments are like. Will you mostly be grading papers? Will this be an online class? And, if yes, do you have to monitor discussions?  

I've been a TA for ~4 years for a variety of different classes, and, depending on the assignment and rate at which you get assignments, grading can take upwards of 6-7 hours per week. 

In general: If you've never TA-ed before, grading will be a struggle at first and you'll take a really long time and you might be especially critical. As you might imagine, people tend to get increasingly disillusioned and the stringency with which you grade will decline (meaning the time spent grading will too).

[bibliophile222]

I was a grader last semester for a 1-credit intro course. Most weeks all i did was monitor the email and answer questions from my section, but whenever there was a paper due (fortunately only five 2-pagers total) it took about 7 hours to grade 62 papers. It can definitely be tricky to find a balance between grading too harsh or too lax. Having a grading rubric really helped.

Just a warning, though: grading might crush your soul a teeny bit! A lot of the papers were, without exaggerating, terribly written, but since it was a 1-credit course, they hadn't had their writing courses yet, and some of them came from different backgrounds than others, I had to try not to be too tough on them. I just kept writing feedback over and over to not write in one long paragraph and to freaking proofread! Aargh!