<p>i'm not talking about professors who could write you recs. these are TAs, students themselves, and can't do too much for you. do you ignore that student-teacher relationship and just pretend you're like two grown ups, or are you cautious about it and try not to overstep the boundaries?</p>
<p>i really do enjoy speaking with people a bit older than me, who are usually mentors, counselors, and teachers. but it's a bit sad, because i know it's inappropriate to try and befriend them, or ask them to do something with you. i guess it's okay to email and update once in a while. but sometimes i chat with a past mentor, and even that doesn't feel too right. i try not to do it too often. am i just letting these conventions of trying to be proper keep a distance between the elder and me when i feel that we bond well, or do you think it's perfectly okay to just hang out with someone twice your age with no relation to you? i just find it kind of hard to do, even if they are the ones who initiate it.</p>
<p>I do it all the time, so I don't think it's that abnormal. There are a few people that I've met where I later learned that they were assisting in one of my classes, and then there's a few TAs who I occasionally talk with for some other classes (basically, met inside and outside of class). If I'm not talking about class material, I treat them like a peer. This generally because they treat us like peers.</p>
<p>Guess it just depends on your comfort level, and also on a person-by-person basis. TAs are people with different interpretations of the world, just like the rest of us.</p>
<p>Of course not. Don't forget that these people won't always be students, and in a few years could be very helpful to you. In addition to being fun and interesting to have a varied group of friends, it's also called building a network for the future.</p>
<p>And of course you can chat with mentors; that's what they're there for! If you don't understand how important mentors can be in your life, even for things that have nothing to do with the mentoring per se, read Tuesdays with Morrie.</p>
<p>One thing I found was that many of the TA graduate students are from other undergraduate universities and really don't know that many people on campus. In some cases they are only a few years older and as with every new relationship they can be really interesting. Many are stuck in an off campus apartment which makes it all that much harder to meet people other than the five other people their year in the department.
Another place I used to socialize with graduate students and professors was at church-catholic newman center (or at on campus clubs, volunteer groups etc). Many times they were regular joe sixpack going to church and it turned out they were full professors. Of course this was in a large university with very few catholics so you sort of got to meet a lot of them in the service of <100.
At 53 I am a Cystic Fibrosis specialist (md). Over the last few years, when I go to the National CF convention, I run in to my old Freshman Zoology TA from Chapel Hill who is noe a big wig PhD bench researcher. Although we don't really talk, we always say hi and then both laugh.</p>
<p>When I was a graduate student TA I became friends with some of my students, and 15 years later I'm still friends with them. One teaches chemistry at UT Austin, another at UT Arlington. One is a pharmacist in Corpus, and another a lawyer in Houston. After I graduated I got a job with an environmental science company, where two of my former students already worked -- and they now had seniority over me.</p>
<p>That age and status difference between you in school evaporates quickly once you're both out in the real world. My friendships with students were based on common interests, though, rather than networking opportunities, and that may be why we're still friends.</p>