Confessions of a GTA: Part 8

Lecturers as a profession are very hard to say no to. In general they control your life from the moment you enter college. They set coursework and will demand you spend time on it, even when it is worth 0.1% of your grade. They will set field trips or labs at times that completely don’t work for you, and will expect you be enjoying ever second.

As a PhD I did not expect much to be different, just that it would be only two people controlling my entire life instead of the teaching staff in general. This turns out to be completely wrong. Yes the power does shift. Most of the teaching staff no longer have any say though they will occasional come up to you in corridors and ask if you failed your final year. But your department lecturers will ask you favours and quite nicely too: ‘Would it be too much trouble’ or ‘would you be interested in’. Besides, more often than not you are interested, as not only do they now love you, (and almost as importantly) they will pay you a lot of money for the honour. You become quite closely guarded by lecturers that depend on you and they will give you the good jobs such as field trips and one-to-one invigilations.

But a time in every GTAs life creeps up on them when they have to say no. This is surprisingly horrible. Frequently during my undergraduate degree, I daydreamed about giving the lecturers a few “home truths” about why their coursework was completely pointless, their course unhelpful and their exam downright impossible (and I must admit saying no to a few of these people was quite satisfying)… However when you second favourite lecturer (pipped to the mark by your supervisor) askes you a “favour”, or when a really nice Professor hits you with the curveball of a fieldtrip worth £300, what do you say?

Now there is always the supervisor sandwich response: “That sounds really interesting, but unfortunately my supervisor does not want me to take on anything more, although I know a few other people that would be interested!” This normally works fairly well, but the lecturers have come up with a counter: surprise and thankfulness. They will appear just when you are halfway through reading a paper that could change your whole thesis plan and a befuzzled ‘let me check my calendar’ is greeted with cries of elation. And a simple ‘I will check with my supervisor’, is not a safe standby as they will check with them.

Thus, if your GTA is a bit grumpy this week give them a bit of slack, because I will confess we are not always there of our own accord.