Fourth-year graduate student Julie Heiser has served as head teaching assistant for Psychology 1, and has TA’d cognitive psych and developmental psych. It’s not the worst job she’s ever had. Or the best.
The TA job description is long. Without a TA to corral the handouts, slides and audiovisual equipment needed for a large lecture class, says Heiser, “the course is going to bomb.” She’s even had to run upstairs and tell a professor that he’s running late. “A course is a production, and it’s also a venue for the professor to show off his talents and stuff. But along with that come enormous amounts of things to do.”
TAs take the heat. Have you heard the one about the professor whose overhead-projector pen ran out of ink? “He said, ‘Do any of my TAs have an overhead pen?’ ” Heiser says. “And they were like, ‘Why would we carry overhead pens?’ And he was like, ‘Shows you how prepared my TAs are.’ ”
TAs dream about their job. And not necessarily in a good way. “When [students] write essay exams, they write the same things over and over again,” Heiser says. “Like, first this person blah blah, then this person blah blah, therefore blah blah blah. I wake up in the middle of the night reciting these things over and over in my head, and it drives me nuts.”
Complaints? Special needs? See your TA. If a student has a problem, the TA is often the first stop. “And a lot of us come from public schools where, hell, no, if you don’t show up to the exam, you get a zero—there’s no exception.” But on the Farm, says Heiser, “we have to make every exception because Stanford spoils its undergraduates.” Oh, and it’s the TAs who fax exams to student-athletes on the road and make sure they return them in time. “It’s not that big of a deal—we’re just kind of waiting around for an hour—but I also can’t imagine it happening anywhere else.”
TA complaints? The usual. Fraternity pledges running naked through a lecture hall or vomiting in the front row.
There’s a certain amount of learning on the job. The Center for Teaching and Learning presents a one-day seminar for new TAs, but otherwise there’s little training. “You’ve been in so many classes that you’re kind of familiar with the role of the TA,” Heiser says. “But still, it’s hard to all of a sudden be in that role. You’re kind of thrown into it.”
TAs need fashion consultants. Undergraduates tell Heiser they can spot a TA across the Quad. “They tell me we walk with our heads down, and we look frumpy and unhealthy,” she says. “I think their perceptions are accurate in some ways—we’re definitely frumpy.”
TAs want to help, but . . . “Students expect to get good grades without working hard—and the grades are already inflated,” Heiser says. Those aiming for law school, she adds, tend to freak out if they get a B. “It’s like the end of the world. You want to help them, but you can’t. They deserved that B.”
Psych TAs don’t diagnose their students. Do they? “Do we diagnose students? No, no,” says Heiser. “Well, I mean, yeah, we do. We know a lot about what people go through as undergraduates, and I think we have an added intuition about what’s really going on and what their motivations and social pressures may be.”
The job has rewards. Sometimes. “What’s so wonderful for the TAs is when you kind of nurture a student into becoming interested in your field,” Heiser says. “I’ve had a couple of students in my sections who have gone on to do research in the department, and that’s rewarding.” She pauses. “But mostly it’s about grades or athletics.”
