41. Teaching is your first priority.

If you are lucky enough to have a job as a teaching assistant, you will be told by your department that your studies are your first priority. This is ridiculous. If you were a football player, it would be a bit like your typical Division I coach telling you that your studies are your first priority. The coach, at least, will usually have the decency to wink while telling you this. Graduate-student teaching assistants, however, are told the same thing by people with straight faces, some of whom may even believe what they are saying. Try to tell the three hundred students whose papers and exams you're grading that your studies are your first priority. For that matter, go ahead and try to prioritize your studies when you have a class to teach five days a week. Don’t forget that your students will be filling out evaluations of your teaching performance at the end of the term, and that these will be part of both your future funding applications and job applications.

The irony is that teaching is not the first priority of the permanent faculty members, because their tenure and promotion depend on research and publication. Their situation is not much better, but at least they earn a salary. For graduate students, teaching has a way of becoming a full-time job, even though it is supposed to be a part-time job. Yes, you have to answer to your professors, but you also have to answer to your students, and the latter greatly outnumber the former.