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Students teaching Students
Graduate teaching assistant describes tough, rewarding realities of her job
story by chris hopkins • photos by gus koffler
Surrounding her are the tools of the discipline. In two opposing corners, human skeletons, both broken and whole, conspire. A monkey skeleton gagged with foam rubber is nearby. In the other two corners, busts of apes and neolithic men gaze down like plaster sentinels. Shelf upon shelf of jawbones sit in a bookcase.
It's 8:30 on a Tuesday morning, and Alexa Pfeffer is trying to explain the difference between antibodies and antigens to a beginning physical anthropology class.
Pfeffer, Glastonbury, Conn., graduate student, is working hard to awaken the discussion section but has little success until she hands out the quiz from the previous Monday.
She said that it was tough to motivate students in the morning and that early classes should be banned.
"I remember being an undergrad, and it didn't matter how interesting your professor was sometimes," Pfeffer said. "I'm not going to take it personally."
"8:30 in the morning, it doesn't matter what you know," Pfeffer said. "It doesn't matter what I know."
Pfeffer turned 26 recently, making her considerably younger than most graduate students, who average 32 years old, but older than most undergraduates, who average 21 years old.
The quiz, which even the graduate teaching assistants had no advance warning of, had been more or less failed by the students, so Pfeffer downplays it a bit.
Pfeffer is fairly average among KU graduate students, who are 57 percent female and 41 percent out of state. The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, which includes the department of anthropology, has more graduate students than any other school with 1.967 of them.
Pfeffer said she was taking three classes this semester, which was one more than the normal load for a graduate student, in order to be able to concentrate on writing her master's thesis next semester. She didn't feel as if this made her particularly overloaded.
"Mostly, it's to get you thinking about the test," she told the students, referring to the midterms which would take place the next week.
"If you don't have an extra class, you've got a thesis or something," she said. "There's always something."
Pfeffer taught an 8:30 and a 9:30 a.m. discussion section that Tuesday morning, immediately followed by her office hours. Though she was scheduled to be in her Fraser Hall office for only one hour, she was there from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., except for lunch.
It was hard for her to find a spare moment in her office last week. Students left only to be replaced by more students, all desperately cramming for this week's midterm exam. By Friday, she was helping 15 students at a time in a small office shared by four people.
"Everyone gets really scared in this class, because there are a lot of people who never took science before," she said.
Pfeffer said that she really enjoyed helping people to understand anthropology.
"It's fun," she said. "It's kind of intimidating because a lot of people are looking to you to know things."
The moment when comprehension strikes a student was second only to one thing in her mind.
"I had some students last semester who came up to me and asked how they could become anthropology majors," she said.
Jim Mielke is the professor of Pfeffer's Anthropology 104 class. He said that some students might feel more comfortable talking to Pfeffer than him.
"Most grad students don't ever go out. If you have a life,you're not working."
"They see the GTA as much more approachable than the professor." Mielke said.
Alexa Pfeffer
Graduate Teaching Assistant
Pfeffer said that students might be intimidated by the
Graduate Teaching Assistant
power difference; therefore,
they might not have the
courage to talk to the professor.
Pfeffer said that students shouldn't be afraid to talk to her.
"If you're in it just to escape reality, you've got to be hardcore, because it's really hard work,"
"They can come up to me, and they can swear, and they call me by my first name and know it won't affect their grade." she said.
After speaking with students during her office hours, Pfeffer took the time to go out and have lunch with several other GTAs from her department. She spent the hour talking about dissertations, theses and the recent lecture by a Harvard University professor.
"Most grad students don't ever go out," she said. "If you have a life, you're not working."
Pfeffer said that because her contract with the school prevented her from fraternizing with her students, letting them see her in a social light was helpful.
Pfeffer said that she tried to get out and have a social life as much as possible. Her students spotted her at bars or concerts sometimes.
"It makes you more human, so they aren't afraid to talk to you." Pfeffer said.
She said that it was difficult sometimes to stop talking about work and that her roommate no longer went out with her and her friends because work was all they talked about.
Having a social life outside of the job is difficult for a lot of GTAs. Pfeffer said.
you. I thank you.
After lunch with her friends,
she returned to work, checked
the Anthropology 104
midterm, printed off 153 copies
of it and helped to finalize
"It's funny," she said. "It's like they get so excited. It's like 'Oh my God! You're my TA! That is so cool!"
Graduate Teaching Assistant
Alexa Pfeffer
Left: Alexa Pfeffer teaches class with a little help from her skeletal friend in the corner.
travel plans.
The plans were for a convention in Columbus, Ohio, that she was going to attend with other GTAs and a professor.
Below: Pfeffer takes a break from the stresses of GTA life.
Pfeffer said she wasn't sure whether she wanted to do research or become a teacher. If she were still here in two years and her group's research project received funding, the project would take her to Alaska for field research.
She said she didn't like the non-teaching portions,such as trying to get grant money for research.
"I'm really not good at schmooing," Pfeffer said.
At the same time, she said she enjoyed her job.
After one final discussion section at 2:30 p.m., Pfeffer helped one more student and then worked on a paper for a class until 11 p.m.
Pfeffer said that being a GTA ate up a lot of her time, and
that it wasn't a good way to avoid joining the work force.
"If you're in it just to escape reality, you've got to be hard-core, because it's really hard work," she said.
Matt Rehder, Great Bend sophomore, said that he thought GTAs put a lot of effort into their teaching.
The work counts a lot more and there are a lot more time constraints in graduate school, Pfeffer said.
"These are the professors you're going to have for a long time, and they're going to have a profound impact on whether you're going to get a job in the field," she said. "The worst part is just not having time for everything and worrying about making an ass out of myself."
"I think they deserve to get paid a little more for all the work they do," he said.
"It's very difficult to juggle one's life," he said.
Mielke said that managing time was one of the problems he remembered from when he was a teaching assistant.
Pfeffer said that graduate school was easier than being an undergraduate in one respect.
"You go to college, and it's your first chance to be who you want to be instead of who everyone else wants you to be, and you don't have to worry about that, which makes grad school 1,000 times more enjoyable," she said.
Pfeffer said that the time constraints and the papers and grading surprise pop quizzes made being a GTA difficult, but not unbearable.
"That's what college is about, isn't it?" she said. "Tough love!"
Pfeffer helps one of her students. Pfeffer said students shouldn't hesitate to approach her.
GTA INFORMATION
6,454 total KU graduate students
965 total KU graduate teaching assistants in the 1999 fiscal year
(including law school students).
$9,245 average stipend.
Partial to all tuition waived by the University.
Source: Jeannette Johnson and the Office of Institutional Research and Planning