<p>I wanted to know if any of you have had either teaching assistant, research assistant, or general assistant positions while in graduate school... Did you start in your first semester or later on? Did you hold this positions throughout your graduate years? Do you feel it was challenging to have these positions while trying to focus on your own school work? What are the pros and cons?</p>
<p>Thank you.</p>
<p>I held a research assistant position for one year. It is very challenging, but it both pays the bills and provides an important part of the graduate student experience.</p>
<p>@polarscribe Thank you! I am trying to decide whether I would like to be a TA or a RA… or maybe just work another job.</p>
<p>I’ve been all three - TA, RA, and a GA in residential life. I started RAing in my first semester; I started TAing my third year and started as a GA during my fourth year. In my fourth year, I was all three - TA, RA, and GA, although technically I was not an RA through the university because I had my own funding.</p>
<p>It was challenging in the sense that much competed for my time, but RAing is essential to a research career so if you are planning PhD and a subsequent research career - an RAship is necessary. Plus my research informed my coursework a lot, as well. I wrote most of my course papers on my research area. My TAship was useful in that I want to teach and the teaching experience is helpful in obtaining academic positions. The GAship was more for my own interests and the extra money and housing it lender, but it’s also useful for wanting to teach because I get to interact with undergrads from a living-learning perspective.</p>
<p>I’d say order of distracting from classes is RAship (best), then TAship, then GAship. Then working some outside job, although that varies depending on what the outside job is (a friend of mine who got her MPH/MPA here worked at a disaster preparedness center, so that’s not wasteful). Some departments frown upon outside employment.</p>