What's it like to have an assistantship at grad school?

[zirtico]

While I know academic rigour varies largely from school to school, did you find that the time spent strictly on classwork at grad school was more, less, or equal to the time spent on classwork in undergrad? I personally came from a school which KILLS you during your undergrad due to an exceptionally poorly organized degree programme, so I was curious how people found their grad school classes compared to their undergrad classes.  

 

Classwork + a TA/RA of around 12-15 hours a week sounds like a very heavy time commitment unless there's less time spent on coursework.  Curious to hear what it's like, or supposed to be like.

[bsharpe269]

I'm doing a masters right now and work as a research assistant too. I would say I do around 30 hours a week of school work + around 30 of research + 10 hours reading articles my field. I generally work from the time I wake up til I go to bed, sometimes I don't have time to take lunch and have to skip it. I have a pretty long commute to campus so I might have a tiny bit more free time if it we'rent for that. The amount of time people put towards school really varies where I am and I would definitely say that I am at the higher end of dedication.