Advice on how to earn from teaching while you learn to cop with education finance.
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| Students who enroll in a graduate program are usually hard pressed for money. They have to deal with tuition as well as living costs. Some are yet to pay off undergraduate school loans. Teaching assistantships can help grad students cope with their studies without worrying about financial matters. Typically, a graduate Teaching Assistant (TA) earns a yearly stipend of about $ 10,000. Plus, the tuition is waived off. Some well established universities will offer more advantages. This may sound like an amazing opportunity but you need to show a sound academic record to apply for a teaching assistantship. You have to be worthy of the role. It’s not only the monetary relief that draws in graduate applicants for teaching assistantships. The experience you’ll earn is just as valuable. As a teacher, you will get to mingle with the staff of your department. This will help your own studies. Any graduate student knows that academic contacts are important when it comes to the post-graduate level. Believe it or not, you will learn more as a teacher than as a student because of the close interactions with faculty members. All these benefits must mean that the work can get pretty tough, right? Not necessarily. There is no standard work profile for a TA; it can vary based on different colleges and different departments. But a TA is expected to teach or assist with teaching for part of a course, conduct lab rotations, score undergraduate exams, have meetings with students regarding academics and conduct study/review sessions. A TA should not expect to have very flexible work hours or to treat the assistantship as any ‘part-time job’. It is after all, a big responsibility. Working hours will generally fluctuate depending on the semester agenda. There will be days when work will be so hectic, because you are struggling to balance work with studies. At other times, you will only need to do routine work which won’t eat away into your own precious study time. About 20 hours per week is the time you will commit to teaching. As you will be working and learning in the same field, the time you spend teaching is not at all wasted. It’s more like career training, especially if you want to be a lecturer in your field one day. If you are organized and confident, there is little difficulty in being a TA. |
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