How do i ask my PI for RAship instead of TAing

[Miro]

As a first year graduate student, I did TAing for five different sections.The work load was a lot hence i did not get any research done. This semester I am on track to be a TA again however I would rather be on RAship. How do i ask my PI to put me on RA?

He has a lot of money however I am not sure how they are tied up.

[crazygirl2012]

Five sections?!? That is a ton of TAing. Does your PI have a grant, or do you mean that the department allocated a lot of money for his students? If he can support you on a grant, you should definitely be able to do more research than teaching. But your assistantship may still be dependent on the department's needs.

Rather than asking for a different assignment, I would just start a conversation about it. You could mention that you're concerned about getting off-track with research, and say that you felt that a lot of your time went to TAing. I feel comfortable being open with my advisor because he doesn't take conversations like that the wrong way. But the way you approach the subject should be dependent on your relationship with your PI.

[Gary in CA]

The TA work grows much easier the 3rd, 4th, 5th time you deal with the same stuff.  Seriously, you didn't accomplish any research?  That isn't a good reason to move you to RA.  It will be tough for the boss to take you off the U's payroll and put you on his with no track record in the lab.  So I'm not going to recommend you engage in any conversation about the transition.  Teach for a couple of years and get good at juggling everything at the same time, teaching, research, coursework, and reading (plus cumes? seminars? orals? group meetings?).  The PI will see how much you've done and move you on his own schedule.

 

I've got to ask a hard question.  How many hours are you working?

Edited December 24, 2012 by Gary in CA

[fuzzylogician]

The TA work grows much easier the 3rd, 4th, 5th time you deal with the same stuff.  Seriously, you didn't accomplish any research?  That isn't a good reason to move you to RA.  It will be tough for the boss to take you off the U's payroll and put you on his with no track record in the lab.  So I'm not going to recommend you engage in any conversation about the transition.  Teach for a couple of years and get good at juggling everything at the same time, teaching, research, coursework, and reading (plus cumes? seminars? orals? group meetings?).  The PI will see how much you've done and move you on his own schedule.

 

I've got to ask a hard question.  How many hours are you working?

 

I disagree. 5 sections is a ton! Do you have a contract or any document stating how many hours you are paid to work a week, and have you been keeping track of your work hours? I second crazygirl2012's suggestion to have a conversation about this with your advisor - one designed to coordinate expectations rather than directly targeted at changing your assignment. If you're comfortable doing so, explain how much work you've managed to do this semester and ask how that compares to his expectations. Ask about next semester's load and how you can improve your situation. Your department's needs may still dictate that you TA, but maybe there are ways of improving the load. 

[Gary in CA]

ModFuzzyL, You asked good questions and the suggestion to manage expectations is a good one also. But you didn't convince me to promote someone who hasn't yet accomplished anything.  I offer you tea and the opportunity to return and state your case at a later date.

 

Still trying to get to the OP's timecard, 5 one-hour sections and 20 hours of grading doesn't fill the week.  Add in the office hours, cume prep, coursework, homework, group meetings, lit review, a lunch and dinner break and see if you can get to 60? 80?  Kudos if you can do grad school on less.  Internalizing, I never could.  I ended up in the grad lounge for a two-hour dog nap about twice a week and never took weekends off.  Holidays and summers were double-time in the lab as well.

 

Is anyone managing to work less than 80 hours?  If so, I tip my hat.

 

"How many hours per week are you actively working??" would make a good poll question in the "expectations" department.

Edited December 28, 2012 by Gary in CA

[TakeruK]

5 sections is a lot! My current program does not have a time limit on how much we're supposed to spend on TAing, but the requirement is one quarter-length course per year during years 2, 3 and 4 only. (So in one year, you've TA'ed more than I ever will in my current program).

 

In my previous grad program, one TA unit was 4.5 hours per week (one section). Students with outside funding (and thus require less TA funding) work only 2 units per year. Students without fellowships work 4 units per year. 

 

So, even 5 sections in one year is definitely higher than the norm, in my experience. 5 sections at the same time is really abnormal!

 

Gary in CA's work estimate is very high though. 5 one-hour sections plus 20 hours of grading is a ton of work to be doing on non-research! In Canada, we were paid hourly (~$40/hr for TAs) so the department has incentive to not overload us on TA duties (they can't afford to pay us $1000/week just to do TAing!). Remember that everything related to the TA work (including attending classes, answering student emails, meeting with the prof to talk about TAing, and doing the problem set also count as TA work, not just grading and teaching).

 

For the OP, you should definitely look into your school and department policies on TA workload. Read over your TA contract or any other funding documents to see what you have to do. Even if the school basically says you have to work as many hours as necessary, with no extra pay (like my current school's deal), logging your hours will help you prove that you have indeed been working hard. It would be useful if you want to show how you are not going to be as productive when you have to TA this much!

 

As for asking about RAing, you can just be up front about it, I think. Not confrontational of course, but I think it's reasonable to talk to your supervisor about how much work you are spending on TA work. Especially if you have an estimate of your TA hours to back it up. I would just mention that I feel that I am not able to get as much research done with all my TAing and ask if it's possible to be funded with an RAship in the future. If there's some department policy about funding that you didn't know, I think your advisor would let you know. Also, he/she might be able to help you transition out of TA funding if it's necessary too.

 

EDIT: In addition, for the OP, they should look into how many hours they are actually expected to spend on TA work. Maybe they only expect you to spend 10 hours per week for those 5 sections (it could be possible if you are just leading the same tutorial section five times, and no grading, so that preparation time is not duplicated). Sometimes people spend too much time TAing but it could be a miscommunication of expectations. In my last 2 years, I found that I often wanted to spend more time grading etc. but I have to budget how many hours I'm allocated to work. In some cases, I might end up working up to 10% more hours than my contract, but I try to avoid working for free when possible! When there was a conflict between hours allocated and the amount of work required, students generally let the department know. They might assign (and pay for) additional hours, or they might remove a graded problem set, or the prof might do more marking, and hopefully adjust things next year. If the department don't do anything to address the discrepancy, I would just do the minimum work so that the students' learning is not damaged (but they would miss out on some enrichment) and let them know that I am unable to do more since they are not assigning enough TAs/TA-hours to this course. Sometimes, the school is more willing to listen to the voice of the tuition-paying undergrads!

Edited December 28, 2012 by TakeruK