Getting reprimanded for poor performance

[butterbbq]

Hi all,

I was a TA this summer, and I know I didn't do a good job. I missed my alarm and missed the first half of my office hours once. I also have been rushing through grading homeworks and delivering them to the class five minutes late. Worst of all, in my rushing, I graded several problems incorrectly on the final and the professor found this. In addition, there was a typo on the solution to a homework and I told students that was the correct answer; I guess it's been a while since I took this class and I've forgotten some things.

The grad coordinator emailed me and told me I need to meet with him to discuss concerns about my performance this summer. This has been a real wake up call; I feel terrible about it, and I wish I could do this whole thing over.

I was wondering if people could tell me how bad this situation is. Am I likely to lose my future TA funding? Even get kicked out of the program altogether? Do any of you have horror stories (where you were at fault) like this?

[neuropsych76]

My guess is that if it is an isolated incident you won't have to worry about losing TA funding or getting kicked out. But it is something you would need to change for your next TA session.

[ktel]

It depends on how competitive TA positions are in your department. If there is someone else who would do a better job who would love to have some funding, then maybe one screw-up is one too many.

[wtncffts]

I agree with the above. I don't think being late for office hours one time is much of anything; I know a few of my peers who showed up for office hours only occasionally, and they didn't seem to suffer. Maybe it's different in your field, but in mine, at least as I experienced it, students never came to office hours anyway. You might get one or two come week before papers or exams, but otherwise, office hours are basically time you can catch up on some of your own work. The grading mistakes, though, are serious and have the potential to create major problems for yourself and the prof. I can only say that this will be a good lesson in time management. There's no reason why you should have to "rush" the grading; if it really is a problem, something should be worked out where you would have some additional time to get it done right.

[msafiri]

I've had that kind of chat before. Usually, it's just about making sure that there's nothing wrong with you and that you know what you need to improve on. In my department, it never leads to funding getting pulled.

[Timshel]

Actually, in my department, when someone got that email, they were told that there funding was pulled at that they would no longer be a TA. I hope that isn't the case for you.

[PsychGrad2011]

When you were accepted into the program, did they tell you you are guaranteed funding for a certain number of years? If so, you aren't likely to lose funding, but either way I would be shocked if you were kicked out of the program. I suggest thinking about the things that went wrong and trying to figure out why they happened and how you can do better in the future, and go into the meeting ready to talk about how you can do better. They may have already made a decision, but you can still give it your best shot!