SECOND DEGREE: A Day in The Life

It's Tuesday, Nov. 22, just before 6 a.m. Juliette Cherbuliez, a second-year Comparative Literature graduate student, sits before her computer. She checks e-mail and finishes writing a weekly one-page paper due later in the day for her Theories of Sexuality seminar. Next, she checks a French database for a project she is working on. Normally, she would arrive on campus from her Center City apartment around 9 a.m. and spend the next few hours preparing to teach that day's 1 p.m. French 121 class, but today the class has an exam. At 10 a.m., she meets with a professor, and sometime after 11 a.m., she meets with a student. At 1 p.m., she goes to Williams Hall room 27 to give the exam. Cherbuliez points out that this is not her "typical" day, largely because she is giving an exam. The day nevertheless encompasses several key aspects of her life as a graduate student: Meeting with students and professors, attending class, grading papers and other activities. While there is no typical University graduate student, certain broad issues define the graduate experience. On a very basic level, all are part of the same larger community, all are students and many are teaching assistants. The fact that there are broader issues facing many graduate students makes it possible to look at one student's experiences to get a feel for the issues with which many graduate students face from day to day. In the classroom, Cherbuliez gives instructions in French, but her mannerisms are unchanged from when she speaks English -- she gesticulates energetically, her hands in perpetual motion. Then, she administers the exam. Most weekdays, though, Cherbuliez's job in the class is not to proctor, but to teach. This is her first year as a teaching assistant, and she is required to teach for two semesters. Several students said Cherbuliez is a demanding teacher. "She's tough," said College junior Noah Goodman. "She's made a class that I didn't think would be too difficult very challenging." College freshman Molly McClelland praised Cherbuliez but also complained about the amount of work required for the class. "I think she's a really good teacher but she gives us way too much work," she said. Cherbuliez's friend Julie Crawford tied together Cherbuliez's demands of her students and her efficacy as a teacher. "I imagine her students get a real challenge in her class, and that it's probably tough for them sometimes," said the second-year English graduate student. "But in the end, they'll appreciate it." Cherbuliez said one positive side of being a TA is that it gives her a "certain role in the University." Because most TAs are enthusiastic about their positions, she said, there are advantages to having TAs teaching courses like hers. "Here you have people who are actually really psyched about where they are," Cherbuliez said. Also, because most TAs are recent college graduates, many can relate to undergraduates better than can professors. "They understand where the undergraduates are coming from," she said. "When they say, 'Oh no, we're going to have homework over Fall Break,' I realize they're not being smarmy little brats," she said. Cherbuliez said that while the pay and benefits TAs receive are not very good -- language TAs are paid approximately $9,000 per year and get very limited benefits -- she values the free education receives. "We get paid paltry sums for what we do," she said. "At the same time, we're getting a free education, so I'm not complaining about it." Cherbuliez said she does not think her satisfaction is representative of the feelings of most graduate students. Susan McCready, a second-year French graduate student and a friend of Cherbuliez's, said she enjoys teaching and feels it is important in her field of study. "The fact is that language teaching is a major part of our field," she said. "Not to like it bodes very ill for [working in] our field." After the last French exam has been handed in, Cherbuliez makes the transition from teacher to student. From Williams 27, she heads for the Lea Library on the sixth floor of Van Pelt Library, where she a French cultural history seminar. The class runs from 2 p.m. to around 3:50 p.m., and there is little time to rest before going to College Hall for her next class, Theories of Sexuality. Cherbuliez said the combination of teaching undergraduates and being a student who deals with the faculty and administration can be a complicated one. "In a large research university, where graduate students so often shoulder a large part of teaching responsibilities, you're in a strange position in the whole power system," she said. Sometimes her responsibilities as a teacher conflict with her responsibilities as a student. Cherbuliez said she recently had to reschedule office hours -- in which she had eight 15-minute appointments scheduled -- because a professor could see her during that time. "When the professor calls, I personally run," she said. Kirsten Wood, a third-year History graduate student, also said balancing the dual role of TA and student can be complicated. "It's complicated for many reasons, in part because of the way authority works within an undergraduate class," she said. She pointed out that while TAs have more contact with undergraduate students and determine the grades, the professor creates the course material. "On the one hand, TAs have a lot of authority," Wood said. "But they don't necessarily set all the conditions, and there's sometimes a problem with perceived authority." Cherbuliez mentioned the problem of establishing authority as a TA. She said she perceived a marked decline in the respect she received from some students when they realized she was not a professor. The issue of getting respect from faculty and administrators also arises. Cherbuliez points to one incident as being illustrative of this problem. Before last summer, there had been a computing center open to everyone in Williams Hall. Over the summer, though, it was converted into a faculty prep center, which she said is supposed to be used by faculty, staff and TAs, who can use it strictly for work-related purposes. Cherbuliez said this is "an example of how easy it is for a university to not meet the needs of a graduate student. "It's bizarre that we don't have a computing center," she added, noting that TAs teach over half the classes in Williams Hall. Cherbuliez also said graduate students often deal with the problem of isolation. "It's incredibly lonely," she said. "I think it would be a safe assumption to say that graduate school is a very isolating experience," she added. McCready agreed, saying, "Being a graduate student anywhere is kind of a lonely existence." Cherbuliez qualified this, however, by saying that this feeling of isolation occurs in the context of living in a close-knit community. "At the same time, what you get out of grad school is a community of people who are interested in what you're doing," she said. "It's an absolute blessing that I get to do work that I like with fascinating people," she added. Crawford echoed these sentiments. "I think a lot of us, Juliet included, sort of appreciate the fact that we're really privileged to be doing what we're doing," she said. After her Theories of Sexuality class, Cherbuliez returns to her Center City apartment. Usually, on a Tuesday, she will go to Van Pelt Library to study for a few hours. On this night, several hours will be spent grading exams with first-year French graduate student Beth Gale. Then she will finish writing a paper. Her decision to live in Center City, rather than on-campus or in the West Philadelphia neighborhood, was due to the fact that most people in her program live in Center City. Cherbuliez said she has stayed there because she likes the "idea of my home being separate from my work." Although job prospects for aspiring professors in the humanities are currently relatively poor, Cherbuliez said she cannot think about that yet. "I have to be worried about what I need to know," she said. "If I go ahead in the next three years and learn what I need to know then I'm going to be a strong job candidate," she said. Despite the busy days and extensive time spent reading, Cherbuliez is not complaining. "We're going here free," she said. "If I take off and decide to become a masseuse, then I haven't lost anything but two years of my life."