Speaker 1: Thanks for checking out this video. Today I'm going to talk all about what it's like being a graduate TA. So I'm going to go over how I found a TA opportunity, what I did as a TA, and what I thought about it. Welcome to Grad Life Grind. If you're new to this channel, thank you for checking it out. And if you're already a subscriber, thanks for being back again. My name is Arielle, and I'm a PhD student in clinical psychology. And in this channel, I bring you information about the mental health field and talk about my journey as a PhD student. So for context, I am a full-time PhD student in clinical psychology. I'm about to enter into my third year, so I just wrapped up my second. And in the last quarter of my second year, I was a TA for social and personality psychology at the doctoral level. At my program, that course is usually taught to first-year students. And I want to go over first how I got that opportunity. So I took the course in my first year just like everyone else, and I loved it. It was super amazing. The professor is incredible. She's a dream, and I want to be just like her when I grow up. But essentially, I took the course, and she reached out to me at the end of the course towards the summer and asked me if I would be interested in being a TA the following year. So I said yes a year in advance, but I made sure to stay in contact with this professor, not just for the TA opportunity, but because I want to work with her in general. And a lot can happen in a year, especially because it was right basically at the start of the pandemic when she offered the TA position to me. So I just made sure to stay in touch with her by email and make sure that she didn't forget that she offered me the position because I was really excited about it. Now, sometimes you can find TA opportunities on your own by reaching out to professors for classes that you've already taken and say like, hey, I really loved your class. Are you looking for a TA next year or next semester or so forth? It doesn't have to be so formal, but every professor has a different style. So some faculty are really chill, and you can just ask them in person or on Zoom if you're still virtual or by email, and then other professors ask you to maybe submit something to them, like a CV or some kind of application. I've seen professors do that as well. So I've reached out by email in the past to professors about a TA opportunity, and they're like, yeah, you can apply, but I'm going to open it up to all my students who might be interested in it, and you'll have to apply like everybody else. So it varies, but in general, you can reach out to professors. You don't always have to wait for them to reach out to you. I think I got pretty lucky. It was such an honor to be asked by this professor, especially because I really look up to her. So my program is private, and so I don't have a graduate assistantship where TA roles are built in. I don't have to do it. It's an additional thing that I can do, and I do get paid for it. So if you're at a program where you have an assistantship where you do have to TA, then maybe the opportunities are a little bit different. In most circumstances, you can just ask by email if there are any positions available. For those of you who do have a TAship and it's built into your funding, I would love to hear in the comments how that works because I'm not in that kind of program, and I know there are going to be people who are watching this who are interested in that kind of situation. So if you can help me out and help other community members here, let me know what it looks like to have your TAship built into your funding package. So to summarize, you can either be asked to be a TA, ask for TA opportunities, or it might be part of your role as a graduate student depending on what your program offers you. So what you do as a TA can vary. It depends on the faculty member who's teaching the course what they want you to do, and it depends on how the course is designed. So there are some courses at my program that are kind of regular classes. There are three credit courses taught like every other where the TA is usually helping with grading and maybe also helping facilitate class discussion. Maybe they're doing one or two guest lectures and so on. That is the setup that I had for the course that I TA'd and I'll touch more on it in a second. And then there are classes in my program that are for credit classes because they are just a broader topic, something like statistics, where there's a lab in addition to lecture. And in that situation the TA will usually lead the lab section on their own, maybe one hour or more, and it's a little bit more independent. So they're doing more hours of work and more kind of intensive instruction with the professor who's teaching the course. So I haven't done that yet, but I have explored those opportunities as well for courses that are a little bit more intense. It'll be like lecture with the professor and then you maybe take a break and then you have an hour or an hour and a half with the TA. So like I said, the class that I taught was social and community psychology and it worked like the first option that I mentioned. So we actually had a kind of flipped classroom format because of COVID. There were already pre-recorded lectures from the professor that students had to watch in advance, usually about an hour worth of content, and then we would meet for two hours on Zoom to have class discussion, breakout rooms, etc. And usually those discussions were led not just by the professor but also by the students. You know, what their reactions were to the readings, what their reactions were to the lectures, and then I was there really to add. So because it was social and personality psychology, the professor was a social psychologist and she has so much knowledge but she isn't a licensed therapist, a licensed psychologist, and that's where my training is. Even though I don't have my PhD yet, I've started working with clients providing psychotherapy under the supervision of a licensed psychologist. So in the class discussions, a lot of times what I added to the conversation was how we can apply these social psychology and personality psychology concepts to working with clients in a therapy room. And so that was super fun. I know I said I would talk about how I got the position, what I did, and then what I thought about it, and I'm kind of blending the last two because as I talk about what I did, I'm remembering how much fun it was. So obviously I'm passionate about psychology, I'm passionate about providing psychotherapy, so it was really cool to be able to talk about my experiences as I was seeing clients for therapy outside of the classroom. I could give the students kind of examples of, I have a client that's experiencing XYZ, here is how this social psychology concept fits. All the students were first years, and in the first year of my doctoral program, the students do not do any clinical work. They may have done clinical work or provided psychotherapy in some capacity in the past before entering the program, but in the first year they're not doing that yet. They're actually about a few months away from starting that. So as I was the TA, I was in that process and I was wrapping up my first clinical training year. So it was kind of cool to not just share with the students the things that I've learned as a psychotherapist, and what I'm currently learning, and how I can apply, how they can apply those concepts. It was also really like a full circle moment for me because I was able to see how nervous these students were to start their clinical training, and they were freaking out about like, what is it going to be like to see clients? What if my client says this? What if my client does that? Especially as we were talking about social psychology and social justice issues, and I could kind of obviously provide them with support, but also just reflect on like, wow, I was in their shoes a year ago. I was freaked out about providing therapy. I didn't know anything. I was completely doubting myself, and now I'm here being able to tell them like, you're going to be all right. This is what you do, or this is what I've done, or here's a moment that I'm proud of as a student therapist, and that feels so freaking good. So that is part of why I think I had so much fun, and I enjoyed it, and I hope they'll be able to TA more in the future, and it's also why I do Grad Life Grind. So Grad Life Grind was created literally when I started graduate school, so if you've been following me for a long time, then you have seen the growth from the beginning. When I first started my program, I didn't know anything that I was doing. When I had major imposter syndrome, when I started seeing clients for therapy, and when I was applying for my next practicum, all these little pieces, all these like mini milestones, maybe they're not mini milestones, but all these moments throughout my program and throughout my training. So I think that my TA experience was really cool for me to reflect on just where I'm at, and it also was motivating to see that these students found my perspective really helpful, and then I see your comments on Instagram or on TikTok, people telling me that it's helpful to them that I provide this information, and that feels so good, and that's really why I do all of this. It's because I wanted this from someone else when I was in your shoes, when I was applying to graduate school, when I was starting my program. I was so confused and nervous, and there was so much self-doubt, and just like fear from not knowing what to expect, and so my dream with Grad Life Grind is really just to fill those gaps. Whatever it is that you're freaking out about, I love when people DM me, and I can reassure them in some way that they're going to figure it out, that they're going to be okay, and that they're going to do amazing things in grad school. So that was my TA experience, and hopefully as I TA more in my program, I'll be able to share different types of experiences, but I really appreciate it if you watch this video. If you have any questions about anything at all, feel free to drop them in the comments of this video. Please also remember to subscribe to my channel and follow me on other platforms, Instagram, TikTok, etc. The other thing that I want you to know is that you can visit my blog, which is brand new, at gradlifegrind.com. There is more content there than what you'll normally see on social media. I've been working on that for about a year, so I'm really excited to have that up. I hope you'll find my content helpful no matter where you consume it, what platform you like to follow me on. Hopefully all of them, but I'm really appreciative of your time and that you've chosen to spend it with me. Take care.