As a graduate Teaching Assistant (or TA), you can typically expect to receive an annual stipend between roughly $6,000 and $15,000, as well as free tuition. At some larger universities, you may be eligible for additional benefits. In essence, as a TA, you're paid to pursue your degree!
The financial rewards of the position are only part of the story. You'll gain valuable experience in and out of the classroom and have the opportunity to interact closely with faculty members in your department. The relationships you develop with your professors are crucial to your future success. Therefore working with them more closely, as colleagues of a sort, can help you to establish yourself and become better known within the department.
An assistantship is no "free ride," of course. While the duties of a TA will vary, depending on both the school and discipline you've chosen, you can expect to be responsible for one or more of the following:
- teaching or assisting with one or more sections of a course
- running laboratory sessions
- grading undergraduate student papers and exams
- holding regular office hours and meeting with students
- conducting study and review sessions
Although this may initially seem like an onerous burden on top of your own course work, you'll most likely find that the demands of the job ebb and flow throughout the semester. For example, while you may feel overwhelmed as you're crushed under the weight of grading seventy-five exams during midterms at the same time you have your own research paper due, you may spend many weeks with little more to do than attend your regular office hours and perhaps deliver a lecture or two. On average, a TA is required to work about twenty hours per week; a commitment that is certainly manageable, especially as the work helps to prepare you for your future career.
If you plan to pursue an academic career, testing the waters as a TA can prove to be an invaluable learning experience where you can gain some practical on-the-job skills. Even if your career path will take you beyond the ivory tower, the position can still be excellent way to pay your way through grad school, develop leadership skills, and get some great experience
