Office hours?

[virtua]

Hey guys, those who work as RA or TA, I wanted to know: are you guys in your offices Mon-Fri from 9 to 5? Do you have like some strict rules on that? Because, I`m just thinking no one can demand from me to work more than 20hrs/week, because it would contradict the US law. Am I right? And I was also wondering if it is okay to come late let`s say at 11am and leave earlier at 4pm or smth? Or is it okay that sometimes I go for something and not being at my office for 1-2 hours?

[rising_star]

There's a difference between hours you're meant to be working as a TA/RA and hours you shuld be spending in your office to get your research and coursework done. No, you shouldn't be doing 40 hours a week of work related to your TA position but, that doesn't mean you shouldn't be in your office. So, I guess I'm not entirely sure what you're asking.

[TakeruK]

First of all, I want to clarify the 20hr/week thing you wrote. Yes, it is true that by US Immigration law, F-1 and J-1 international students are not allowed to work more than 20 hours per week during the school year (when classes are in session). However, this limit only applies to paid work hours and not all of the hours that you are working on your research project counts as paid work hours. In fact, you will often register for something like "Thesis Research" or similar course so that the work you are doing for your lab/prof/group counts as coursework instead of paid research work.

In addition, this limit only applies during the school year (when you are taking courses) because US Immigration doesn't want a F-1 or J-1 student to delay their degree progress (and spend more time in the US) by working instead of taking courses. For a graduate student, this doesn't make as much sense of course, since we need to do the research work in order to finish!

In my case, now that I no longer take courses, I still must register for 36 hours per week of courses to maintain full time student status (which is required for F-1/J-1 status) so the first 36 hours of work I do is unpaid coursework. Actually, the way my funding is structured, all of my research hours is unpaid coursework, and the only paid work is my TA hours. But at other schools, some of your RA work will be paid and you'll do fewer hours towards your "research/thesis course".

So, if the reason you are asking is that you are worried that you are violating US Immigration law (and thus your F-1/J-1 status) then you probably don't have to worry about it. Definitely talk to your school's international office if you are not certain how you are not violating these rules though.

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However, from your post, I think you might also be asking another question: Can a professor require you to work for more than 20 hours per week? And the answer is yes. Because the 20hr/week limit is only for paid work. In order to meet degree requirements, it is almost certain that you must work more than 20 hours per week. 

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And your last question: Is it okay to come into the office at 11am and/or take a few hours off in the middle of the day and come back later? This completely depends on your professor/PI/supervisor and the group dynamic. If you are in a school with a union then maybe there might be some additional rules. And, your specific school and department might have other rules or guidelines too. But in general, the federal law does not require you to work any specific hours.

It is perfectly acceptable though for a professor to expect their students be in their offices from 9am to 5pm. Some professors don't care when you work as long as you do enough work---my officemate works from approximately 2pm to midnight each day. Other professors will allow deviations from 9am to 5pm but ask that you get them approved in advance. And yet others will not allow this at all and require their students to "clock in" every day like a real job. 

Generally, I haven't heard of many schools with rules that prevent their professors from exerting this level of control. And sometimes being in the lab is necessary for research to get done (totally depends on the field). So, my advice would be to find out what potential advisors will be expecting and make this part of your decision making process. If the level of management (or lack of management) is not a good fit for you, it would be good to find another professor!

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Finally, to give you a data point, there are generally no strict requirements on when I have to work. The closest thing to an "experiment" that I do is using the telescope to observe and collect data. Time on the telescope is competitive so when we are granted time, it's expected that I make this the highest priority---i.e. it's the only time I "have" to work. We know about telescope scheduling time at least 2 months in advance, so this is reasonable for me. (I'm just talking about research here, for my TA work, I obviously have to be there for those responsibilities too).

There are also other things that are not strict requirements but highly encouraged. For example: department seminars, group meetings and spending time to meet with visitors to our group. I always do these unless something important comes up. I would schedule my social activities around seminars, but if I want to take a vacation, I'm not going to reschedule my trip to avoid missing department seminars! 

And lastly, I would say there are things that must happen but are very flexible on when they happen. These are things like my weekly meeting with my advisor---we decide on a new time each quarter based on the best time for both of our schedules and we move them as needed from week to week. 

Other than those things, I am free to work whenever I want / need to. My choice is to work 8am to 5pm Mondays through Friday. I take a 1.0 hour lunch and up to 0.5 hours of breaks during the day when I feel I need a break. This works out to be about 37.5-40.0 hours per week, which is typical of a "full time real person job". I try my best to always refuse to meet with people after 5pm (I will occasionally work beyond 5pm but I only do so when it's my choice, not because someone wants to schedule something after 5pm).

I work hard but take advantage of my flexible schedule to do things like schedule dentist appointments in the middle of the workweek to avoid crowds and sometimes even take an hour off in the middle of the day to do grocery shopping etc. I make up these hours in the evening or weekends as necessary. But I do all of this because my advisor and I have talked about expectations!

[virtua]

Thank you! Your answer explains everything that I was wondering about!  

[Shamrock_Frog]

I started off the semester having set hours for office hours. But no one ever came by so I set it up as an "email me 3 times you are available and we can set something up" situation. And I used the set hours for when I knew my students had upcoming projects and papers due. It seemed to work pretty well. 

[Arcadian]

On 11/21/2015 at 4:36 PM, virtua said:

are you guys in your offices Mon-Fri from 9 to 5?

No. I have one regular office hour per week, or by appointment. This obviously depends on your school/department/program/professor.

[TakeruK]

On 12/14/2015 at 8:07 AM, Shamrock_Frog said:

I started off the semester having set hours for office hours. But no one ever came by so I set it up as an "email me 3 times you are available and we can set something up" situation. And I used the set hours for when I knew my students had upcoming projects and papers due. It seemed to work pretty well. 

 

14 minutes ago, Arcadian said:

No. I have one regular office hour per week, or by appointment. This obviously depends on your school/department/program/professor.

I think the original question was referring to office hours in the sense that hours spent working in the office, instead of the office hours that a TA or professor may hold for a specific course!

[Arcadian]

19 minutes ago, TakeruK said:

I think the original question was referring to office hours in the sense that hours spent working in the office, instead of the office hours that a TA or professor may hold for a specific course!

The department doesn't keep track of my hours spent in the office. I'm not sure how that would even be possible. This isn't "clock-in clock-out" wage labor. If I'm fulfilling my responsibilities, no one cares how long it took.

Edited December 15, 2015 by Arcadian

[TakeruK]

1 hour ago, Arcadian said:

The department doesn't keep track of my hours spent in the office. I'm not sure how that would even be possible. This isn't "clock-in clock-out" wage labor. If I'm fulfilling my responsibilities, no one cares how long it took.

Mine doesn't either and in most places that is true. (This is what I wrote to the OP above).

But that's not always the case. There was one professor in my last department that asked their students to clock in and clock out of the lab and requires students to work a certain number of hours and days per week.

Also, TA work in some places is an hourly position (e.g. in Canada), not a salary position, so we do have to be careful to log our hours. I think that for TA work, this is actually a good thing because it puts a price tag to our labour ($40/hr). So, departments and professors cannot just ask students to do everything possible. With only so much money (and thus time) allocated for each course, the professor must think about what is the best use of the TA resources they have and then assign duties accordingly. This also makes TA work more fairly distributed too---TAs that have to be in the lab for the lab courses usually get assigned less grading work because their in-lab hours count towards the contracted limit. So, every grad student, no matter what TA assignment is paid the same amount of money for the same amount of time worked. And it means the department and professors respect the fact that grad student labour isn't free!