Molecular Biology AI Manual

Life as a TA

The Reality of Being a TA
TAing a course can (and should!) be a rewarding and enlightening experience. However, being a TA is time-consuming, and you should expect to be busier than normal. After all, you are now juggling the myriad responsibilities of TAing (precepts, lectures, grading, office hours, conferences with students, course-related meetings, etc.) along with the labwork and coursework that goes with being a graduate student. Somewhere in there you must also fit in a life (or at least, laundry).

In the beginning, you may feel that you are never "done" with teaching for the week, or that you don't have enough time to prepare. Take comfort in the fact that after the first few weeks of the term, most TAs do strike a balance between teaching and the rest of their lives. This balance is achieved by utilizing good time-management skills and by setting clear boundaries on your teaching activities. This section offers some strategies that TAs have found useful in managing their time.

Estimate Your Workload
Before you can devise a plan for managing your time, you must have some idea of your total workload. First, break down your total workload into categories of graduate coursework, lab-related work, and TA-related work and make a list detailing the hours you expect to spend on each kind of task, e.g. attending lectures. When estimating, try to include things related to each category; for example, study time for your classes, time for weekly lab meetings, preparation time for precepts, and time to grade class assignments. This analysis will give you a good idea of how busy you will be (you may be surprised when you add up the hours), and it can indicate how you should distribute your time. Because most TAs consider time for labwork to be the most flexible category, this analysis can also tell you how much time you can realistically expect to spend in lab. This is especially important when dealing with your PI (see below).

Make a Weekly Schedule
The next step is to take your workload analysis and create a generalized weekly schedule. Use this schedule to help you break down your teaching duties into manageable blocks of time. By mapping out your structured time commitments, you will be able to determine the "open" blocks of time in your schedule. Make life easy for yourself and reserve the largest blocks of time for labwork and studying. Also, protect those large blocks of time by targeting your office hours and precept times to days that are already tied up with classes, meetings, etc. The smaller blocks of time can then be used for various other tasks. Although some people do best with a "flexible" schedule, others find it helpful to dedicate certain times of the week to certain tasks. Use whatever works for you.

Know Your Priorities
Before you start TAing, you may also want to think about general priorities: You may be more concerned about making a good impression in a rotation than in getting an "A" in a class, or perhaps you want to do really well in teaching and care less about your rotation work. Regardless, having already determined your general priorities, you will know what to concentrate on and what to let slide when the inevitable time crunch occurs. Realize also, that your priorities may shift during the term. For example, you may have a lab meeting looming on the horizon, and you want to concentrate on lab work for the week so that you will have something to discuss at the meeting. However, you need to keep in mind that once you have committed to TAing a course, responsibilities such as precepts and labs are not optional. The key is to be flexible without compromising your overall goals. Finally, you should also understand that your priorities may differ from your fellow TAs, and that this could affect your interactions with them.

Know Your Responsibilities
It is also important to have a clear idea of your TA responsibilities at the outset of the term. The professor(s) for the course are usually (but not always) the best source of information. Usually, you will be required to attend lectures, teach a precept or lab section, and help in the grading. You may also be required to attend TA meetings, and some professors like input in writing or reviewing the exams. Grading can be particularly time-consuming, so find out how much grading is involved for the precept, the midterm(s), and the final, so that you can plan accordingly. Former TAs are especially helpful in finding out how much time is involved in grading. Also, it is helpful to know how a precept grade figures into the total grade of a student. Sometimes, a precept grade is only used when a grade is on the borderline, and this may affect how you allocate your time.

The main responsibility of a TA is to help teach course material. But sometimes, the biggest time-sink in teaching can be learning the course material well enough to feel comfortable teaching it. The key is to get comfortable with feeling uncomfortable. You will simply not have the time to become expert on everything covered in the course. One strategy is to concentrate on the areas in which you feel weakest and simply refamiliarize yourself with the rest. If you are TAing a lab course, take heart: most lab courses familiarize the TAs with what is going on before they have to face the students. Also, it is almost a certainty that at least one of your co-TAs will have some experience with a given technique. In general, the lecture and reading material will define the boundaries of the topic, and students rarely venture beyond these boundaries. Thus, reading/skimming (depending on your experience with the material) the textbook and other class materials and attending the lectures is usually sufficient. However, the truth is, sometimes you will be in unfamiliar territory. If something in the course material confuses you, it probably confuses the heck out of your students. If you are shaky, ask the professor or another TA for help. It also perfectly acceptable to tell a student that you don't know the answer, but that you will try to find out by the next precept.

Set Limits and Boundaries
You are aware of your workload and your schedule, you have a set of priorities, and you know your responsibilities as a TA. But you are not only a TA, you are also a student and a person, and it is important to maintain a balance between TAing and the rest of your life. You may feel pressured into doing more on behalf of a professor or a student. It is a delicate situation when a professor is demanding more of you than what was agreed upon. Some TAs just bite the bullet and deal with it as best they can. Still others find that sharing their concerns with the professor was often sufficient to be "let off the hook." If a situation is becoming unreasonable, talk to your PI or the Director of Graduate Studies. They will work to help rectify the situation.

More often, it is your students that are demanding more of you. Of course, we all want to help our students learn, but sometimes they can be overwhelming. It is important to limit, as much as possible, the number of students that "drop-in" on you while you are working in lab or studying. At your first TA session, explain to your students that you need to do your own work too, and set a policy that limits student contact to your precept and your office hours. If they are unable to make office hours, tell them to contact you to set up an appointment. If demand is high, such as in the weeks before an exam, some TAs will expand their office hours or allot additional time before or after precepts to meet with students. The idea is to meet the needs of the students on your terms, so that they won't disturb you when you need to do experiments or study.

Many TAs have found it helpful to only give out their lab phone number to their students. This ensured them some privacy at home. If you do not want your students contacting you at home, let your lab know that they should not distribute your home number to your students. If you feel guilty about this, remember: giving out your home phone number to your students is a personal choice, not a departmental policy.

Dealing With Your PI
The truth is, it is a rare PI that doesn't mind his/her graduate student TAing. Most PIs begrudge the time it steals away from labwork. The best policy when dealing with your PI is to share your schedule and workload list with him/her. Help them to understand that you will be very busy and assure them that you will make every effort to do a reasonable amount of labwork given your teaching schedule. Some TAs also find that giving their PI a copy of their schedule helps to prevent any misunderstandings. For example, if your PI is wondering why you are not in the lab, he/she can look at your schedule and see for themselves that you have to attend an 11:00 lecture every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. If you run into problems, just remember, teaching is a requirement for your degree and an integral part of your graduate education. If you run into serious problems, talk to the Director of Graduate Studies.

If All Else Fails...
Sometimes all the best time-management skills in the world won't prevent a time crisis. You are not alone, and you are not without options. Realize that if you are in a serious time crunch, you can probably miss a lecture here or a meeting there. Ask your fellow TAs to help you with lecture notes, or to explain a concept to you, or to fill in on a precept. You will probably have an opportunity to return the favor. Also, don't be afraid to appeal to the professor, he/she may be able to help you out as well.