Tales of TA-ships
My first semester in graduate school, I was thrown in the deep end. Working at a large commuter state school, receiving funding, I was put to work for Awesome Professor as a TA in the US survey class. There were 570 students and 3 TAs: me, Smelly Guy, and Creepy John. One thing that made Awesome Professor so Awesome is that he worked individually with me whenever I ran into trouble... and he required the three TAs to spread their office hours out over the week for maximum availability. Consequently, I didn't have to spend too much time with Smelly Guy or with Creepy John. In fact, it took me almost the entire term to learn why Creepy John was particularly creepy.
During the final exam, we were proctoring and collecting students' blue books, and Creepy John started to make small talk. It was common knowledge that I was traveling to India over the winter break for my first trip there. CJ asked where I was to travel, what I would be doing. As a young student with a pierced nose turned in her test, CJ asked me if I'd ever considered piercing my nose, suggesting I could get it done in India pretty easily. "No," I replied. When a tattooed student turned one in, he asked if I planned to get a tattoo while in India. "No."
"What about a toe ring?" Now, I had considered that. I had a fake one which I wore occasionally, and the thought of getting a permanent one was intriguing. At this admission, CJ perked up considerably.
Come to find out later on that CJ was notorious around the TA office for his interest in the feet, hair, and other extremities of the female TAs. He had offered to paint toe nails, to give foot massages, to brush hair (he repeatedly told me how lustrous my hair looked during the two semesters I spent preggers) for any of us.
Looking back, I wouldn't quite consider this a hostile work environment issue, mostly 'cuz we all openly laughed at him and his various fixations and he never had any real power over anyone.
But this gets at a very real situation in grad school: the women's protection grapevine. I was on both sides of it during my time at the University: being warned which professors to avoid ("He's a boob starer," "He's a butt pincher") and telling the newbies the same information. Most were harmless, although one woman did tell me never to meet with a particular prof with the door shut. Nor to wear skirts when I went to class with him. One young woman, when going over her schedule with two more senior grad students, was informed that she'd signed up for three classes in one term from known department pervs. "You've hit the dirty old man trifecta!" one woman told her.
I know this was not unique to my institution. And that's just sad.
During the final exam, we were proctoring and collecting students' blue books, and Creepy John started to make small talk. It was common knowledge that I was traveling to India over the winter break for my first trip there. CJ asked where I was to travel, what I would be doing. As a young student with a pierced nose turned in her test, CJ asked me if I'd ever considered piercing my nose, suggesting I could get it done in India pretty easily. "No," I replied. When a tattooed student turned one in, he asked if I planned to get a tattoo while in India. "No."
"What about a toe ring?" Now, I had considered that. I had a fake one which I wore occasionally, and the thought of getting a permanent one was intriguing. At this admission, CJ perked up considerably.
Come to find out later on that CJ was notorious around the TA office for his interest in the feet, hair, and other extremities of the female TAs. He had offered to paint toe nails, to give foot massages, to brush hair (he repeatedly told me how lustrous my hair looked during the two semesters I spent preggers) for any of us.
Looking back, I wouldn't quite consider this a hostile work environment issue, mostly 'cuz we all openly laughed at him and his various fixations and he never had any real power over anyone.
But this gets at a very real situation in grad school: the women's protection grapevine. I was on both sides of it during my time at the University: being warned which professors to avoid ("He's a boob starer," "He's a butt pincher") and telling the newbies the same information. Most were harmless, although one woman did tell me never to meet with a particular prof with the door shut. Nor to wear skirts when I went to class with him. One young woman, when going over her schedule with two more senior grad students, was informed that she'd signed up for three classes in one term from known department pervs. "You've hit the dirty old man trifecta!" one woman told her.
I know this was not unique to my institution. And that's just sad.
posted by Courtney at 3:55 PM
4 Comments:
i was so clueless...
but i knew CJ--he asked me to flash my boobs and told me old southern white men thought sleeping with black women brought good luck.
that went right over my head til just now.
One solid good thing about being very Up Front about being a Strict Catholic ... lots of sleazy peers and presumably some sleazy profs just didn't bother. I took myself clearly and very publically out of their game. I can only recall one slimy come-on while I was in college, and that was about 8 days in, so I hadn't firmed up the reputation yet.
There are some advantages to parts of Tradition ;).
But yuck to all that stuff. Yuck yuck yuck. I am so sorry you had to (presumably still have to) worry about that. I am very glad to hear that it was spoken clearly to the less experienced. Too many things are hush hush.
Elle, brought good luck? Sure it did. In the sense of "getting lucky" (oh, and he would have been all too lucky to have gotten even a peep from you!)
Reminds me of when one of the "old perv" professors was rumored to be ready to accept a job elsewhere, and our study group replied, "What a shame, none of us has gotten around to sleeping with him yet."
ha! oh, man, i remember the same thing when teaching at Big Midwestern University.
we knew which profs had things goig with other grad students, which had booze problems and which had certain fascinations with the women of color in the departmet. (i guess we were so rare, they just couldn't get enough.)
Post a Comment
<< Home