The New Crew of Graduate Assistants

I haven't posted anything in months. I don't know why. Maybe my students' apathy has rubbed off on me. That's I why stay as far away from them as possible. Maybe I'm one of their Walking Dead.

At the beginning of the semester I got a good look at the new graduate assistants, the aspiring professors of tomorrow. In the past, most haven't impressed me in a positive way because most are teachers' pets who schmoozed their way into a contract that pays them a few thousand a year to grade papers, work in the writing center teaching students who (like themselves) can barely write. Some are confused graduates of other state universities who mistake this diploma mill for its flagship campus. (More on that some other time). Some Graduate assistants sort memos and put them in professors' mailboxes. After a year of that, they're put into a class room teaching freshman students the finer points of writing an essay.

Others do things that few seem to know about. They show up for the end-of-the-year faculty get together, say a few words, then they're off until next year after the herd has been thinned, and the survivors proceed to the next part of their contracts and they begin "teaching" freshman writing. 

In the past I avoided giving input to the acceptance procedure except to sign my name to their applications and to make a few cryptic remarks. I don't approve or disapprove of any of them. Some are graduate faculty pets (or worse, relatives), so recording a negative (or positive) remark on the application can have consequences. If one turns out to be a skirt chaser, a little slut, a short-tempered witch, or a drug user (and is found out), whoever recommended the student (including the prof who wrote the letter of recommendation) could be called to account for the recommendation.

Most of the graduate assistants tend to be shallow and generally uninteresting , though on paper, they come across as incredible intellectuals of the highest caliber and of the strongest moral fiber. In the past, we've gotten applicants who claimed to have been raised by parents who did missionary work in Africa. Some of them had a father or mother who worked in the diplomatic corps. Of course, no one bothered to verify their claims because they were locals. Anyone could have checked their claims.

But no one ever did.

One year we had two nontraditional student applicants who claimed to be men of the cloth. One of them allegedly had teaching experience. I didn't hear much about either after they entered the program.

Last year when the applications were passed among the graduate faculty I read through some of them. One caught my eye. He was a twenty-four year-old male whose grades were stellar. He graduated from a top twenty university, and one of his letters of recommendation came from the chair of the English department of another top twenty university. He had a degree in American literature and took a break after receiving his BA to explore the business world. He claimed to have become a vice president of a division of General Motors in two years!

Wow. I was impressed by his moxie. He was turned down because no one believed his CV. If only my colleagues were equally critical of other applicants' CVs.