Nothing like was promised

[enginerd]

I just want to vent here for a moment. I was admitted with full funding in the form of a RA position guaranteed for one year. I have this in writing with the exact dollar amounts for stipend and fee remissions. The offer was from my particular group and not a specific professor. When I got here, none of the professors in that group would accept me as an RA claiming there was no funding available. So now, I am stuck TA'ing for the semester without a research project to work on, no desk or lab to work in and I have to TA a section of 50 students and hold office hours every week in my invisible office. I am sorry, but picking Berkeley was a huge mistake. I should have went with a school where I was offered a fellowship or gotten a more legally binding contract that was signed by both parties, not just an offer letter. I want out of here. And of course I am just finding all of this out when it is too late to go anywhere else. In addition, my bill still has not been paid, so my housing is being threatened since the bill is overdue by a week and thus I am not "officially registered" at Berkeley which is a requirement of my housing contract. Also, I cannot go to the clinic since my insurance is not effective, so this abscess will have to wait a little longer for a root canal.

I don't have any money or any other resources. Berkeley sucked me in because of it's promises for a fair stipend, full health and dental, research projects that I wanted to work on. I passed up so many other excellent opportunities for this. I am so angry, and so disappointed. I made such a big mistake. Maybe they promised in writing knowing that when they reneged that I wouldn't have the means or resources to do anything about it. I am going to start researching the possibility of going elsewhere, maybe applying again to those places that offered fellowships. I hate my life right now.

[lambspam]

You can't be more than a week or two into the semester. Just give it a fair shake before you make any serious, unalterable decisions like leaving. Departments have a lot of logistics to juggle, especially at the beginning of the semester. Things will calm down and become more functional as the year progresses.

And who knows, maybe you'll really enjoy TAing.

[robot_hamster]

Have you spoken with the director or associate director of your department? They may be able to help you in this situation. Let them know what happened. They may not be able to get you into an RA position this semester, but they could try to find something for you for the spring semester. Or at the very least they can help you with your financial dilemma. I agree not to make any hasty decisions, it could still work out.

[enginerd]

I appreciate the replies. I am taking in both of you guys optimism. I just feel burned and disappointed. I will not be leaving abruptly unless they never pay my bill and I get administratively purged from my classes which may soon be forthcoming. Under those circumstances only will I crawl back under the rock from which I came. In the meantime though I think it's a good idea to keep my options open.

[Eigen]

Have you gone in person and talked to your department chair/director of graduate studies/dean/provost about this? Not having your bill paid leading to housing problems and class purges is a big deal.

We've had problems with getting our tuition remissions through before they were due, the school has always worked something out. That said, you have to let them know and push them to do something.

[bluejay16]

That sounds like such a nightmare! You should definitely set up meetings with the big boss of your department and just to be on the safe side of everything, you should document what you do and what the faculty 'tells' you. If I were you, I wouldn't wait for uncertainty to make its way, I'd start planning Plan B, C, and possibly D.

[StrangeLight]

go to your director of grad studies. tell him/her everything. bring the letter, explain no one would take you on as an RA, explain all of your frustrations. it's his/her job to sort this out for you, so you won't be putting any undue burden on him/her. do this on monday.

as for getting purged from classes, you can still attend them even with your tuition outstanding. just explain to the prof (if the prof asks) that the school hasn't paid your bill yet. keep going, keep taking notes, keep doing the work. it'll be fine.

also, TAing for only 50 students sounds like a dream. in my program, the standard is 80 students (4 discussion sessions of 20 students). you may like TAing. you may decide to be a prof rather than go into industry because of how much you enjoy it. don't write it off yet. but still talk to your director of grad studies and see if you can get what was promised you, at least for the second semester if not for the first.

are berkeley's grad students unionized? i'm guessing no, but if they are, also approach your grad union representative about this.

i know this is frustrating, but you are also not the first student this has ever happened to. if you complain, loudly, to people that matter, they will try to work something out with you. if you resign yourself to getting screwed over, you will be screwed over again. go talk to someone that can help you.

Edited August 27, 2011 by StrangeLight

[blackshirt]

I went to Berkeley for undergrad, so I'm slightly familiar with this situation.

Everything always takes forever to process, and there are always threats, but the good news is that bureaucracy threatening you goes even slower than the bureaucracy messing you up, so they never actually screw you out of anything. It just takes a bit of a long time.

Unfortunately, your department has no control over budget cuts, so if the funding disappeared (which it probably did after your offer was made official), there's not much they can do about it. The state of CA made that decision for them.

Usually when you have no office, you can set something up where you split one with somebody else or you get one in a different building. If none of this works, many grad students hold office hours at the FSM cafe.

Like everyone else said, definitely talk about all of this with your DGS. Also consider approaching other students in your cohort or the year ahead of you to see if they have ideas regarding getting "officially registered" sooner. Sometimes it's a matter of just calling the right office and nagging.

Berkeley is an amazing school doing cutting edge research and I'm sure (at least, I hope!) you'll grow to love it soon enough. It's just that they're under a lot of financial pressure right now, so things are rocky. It's also got a largely "go get it yourself" culture; you have to 'fight for' a lot of things but once you get used to advocating for yourself, it comes naturally.

Good luck, and sorry things are starting off on the wrong foot!

***Edited to say that Berkeley's grad student's ARE unionized (of course, haha; sometimes the Berkeley stereotype is justified); as an undergraduate tutor I briefly joined the union myself. I'm not sure how you can find them (they found me) but they do exist!

Edited August 27, 2011 by blackshirt

[Tall Chai Latte]

Hey enginerd,

Speaking of being disappointed, I totally feel you. As of now, I have gone through 4 lab rotations, found my lab home twice and was forced to find other opportunities due to random stuff happening in the background, unrelated to me. I am still without a lab, and my second year is about to start in less than two weeks. I totally understand how it feels like to be promised something, and have that promise taken away...

Hang in there! It may be dark today, but tomorrow may be brighter. Wish you the best!

[SNPCracklePop]

Really, really think hard about leaving before walking away. You may not get this opportunity again. That said, situations like this are more common than they should be. Be the squeaky wheel, and you'll get your oil. Talk to the department head(s) and anyone at the top of your group that can get you your scratch. I can't imagine your frustrations right now (frankly, I'm very disappointed that such a highly-rated department within a prestigious (and heavily endowed!) university would do this to their students). Very unprofessional of Berkeley.

Stay in the fight. If it looks bleak, communicate with the other programs that accepted you. Worst comes to worst, you're at a program that treats you fairly and miss only a year of time. Good luck!

[starmaker]

I have a friend who was in a similar situation (albeit at a very different department, one that is very small). She stuck it out with TAing at first, and then lost funding altogether because of weird interdepartmental politics. She found a sympathetic professor, with some influence, who was outside her subfield (but in a subfield that she was willing to move into), asked if he would consider taking her on, and explained what had happened with her previous funding. She said (truthfully) that if she couldn't get some kind of reliable funding, she would have to leave after her MS. He must have pulled some strings in the background, because within two days she had an RAship in her original subfield.