In response to “Can you hear us now?”:
I am a graduate student who is two years into a doctorate. I have a master’s degree. I am a teaching assistant. My student evaluations tend to be excellent. I am underpaid. I am in debt. In my time at UF I have been regularly approached by students who are failing and wonder, “Why?”
I often think to myself, “Maybe you wouldn’t be failing if you didn’t spend so much class time texting, Facebooking or reading the Alligator.”
I often think, “When did an ‘A’ become a right?”
I often think, “Maybe if your parents were willing to pay the kinds of taxes required to fully sustain public education, they (not you, dear student) would have a right to complain about the quality of the education you are receiving.”
I often wonder, “How can a supposed public Ivy League university actually house students who write into this paper to defend the Confederacy as they attend a school where more than a third of their fellow classmates probably won’t check ‘caucasian’ on the Census?”
On behalf of graduate teaching assistants, lecturers/adjuncts, assistant professors and even senior scholars with job security, I offer this small piece of wisdom: Don’t complain about the work your teachers do until you’ve fully examined the work you’re doing.
The job of holding your hand and entertaining you belonged to your parents. I use the past tense here because they didn’t send you here for no reason. They obviously got exhausted by the work and wanted to quit.
