I bust my ass every day for Emporia State and what do I get in return? Less than $700 per month and a $900 bill for student fees.

I’m a graduate teaching assistant at ESU. I absolutely love my job because of my students—the connections I form with them make me feel like I am making a positive impact on their lives. That being said, I feel as though I’m being taken advantage of by ESU. I work too much and get paid too little. 

First things first, the term “graduate teaching assistant” is misleading. You would think that as a “teaching assistant” I would be assisting someone who is the teacher. This is not the case—I am in fact the teacher. A more appropriate title would be “graduate student instructor.”

I teach microbiology lab at 8 a.m. and 9 a.m. every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. I stand in front of 24 future healthcare providers and teach them how to prevent the transmission of diseases through safe microbiological practices. I also grade and provide feedback on all assignments, fill-out student concern forms and modify my teaching practices so microbiology can be accessible to everyone. That is a lot of responsibility for less than $700 per month. FYI, that’s less than 40% of what a professor would make with the same class load.

Now that’s just what I do for my assistantship. I have a whole slew of requirements for my program that I must complete in conjunction with my assistantship. For instance, I have to take a full load of graduate level classes and perform high quality research for my thesis project.

ESU has indirectly forced me to get not only a second job, but a third job. I have three jobs as a full-time graduate student because I literally cannot afford to live and pay student fees. That means I have essentially no free time to do any research. And what happens when I don’t do research? I don’t get to graduate. I’ve had to push my graduation date back by a semester because of this.

An easy fix to this issue is for ESU to waive the student fees. If I didn’t have a bill from my employer every semester (that’s more than a month’s worth of wages), I wouldn’t need to have a second or third job. I would have time to complete my research and get the hell out of town, Master of Science in hand.

I’ve come to the conclusion that I am not an important employee to ESU. I mean, why would I be? I’m just a pleb with a biochemistry degree. I’m just a filler for someone with a PhD. My employment is temporary and unimportant. I’m no better than the thousands of cockroaches that roam the halls of ESU at night.

If GTAs weren’t here to literally teach classes, ESU would be screwed. Sometimes I like to think about what would happen if all GTAs just stopped going to work. Who would complete our duties? Someone with a PhD? I highly doubt it!