Clarifying Funding

[mouse13]

I am told that I am hired by the university as a teaching assistant. I have completed all of my teaching assistant requirements. Today I found out that I am supposed to have known that I am a research assistant. The only piece of paper that says that I am supposed to be a research assistant is my "ta assignment". This says that my teaching assistant assignment is to be a RA for a certain professor. After receiving this assignment I continued to receive information about being a TA from both my department and the university. I don't understand how I am supposed to know that I am a research assistant when everything else that I received says I am a TA. The moral of the story is, new or future graduate students, be perfectly certain about your funding because you will be blamed for mistakes other people make in informing you of your duties. 

[fuzzylogician]

This post is so vague, I have to say I didn't understand anything. Are you just now starting? Are you a senior graduate student? Was your funding situation not clearly stated to you in writing when you were admitted to your school? If you've completed all your TA requirements, how come you need to do anything more -- is there some confusion about that? Who is accusing you of what exactly? In general, mistakes do happen, and regardless of who is to blame and whose job it was to catch them, these mistakes tend to affect the individual more than the organization. So even if it's not your job to stay on top of things like your official status as student/candidate/TA/RA/other, your funding source, your immigration status (when relevant), etc., it often pays off to do so yourself anyway so you can catch and correct any mistakes before they have a serious impact on you.