The average graduate student has three functions: To study: students need to attend classes, to do homework and projects, and to prepare for exams; to teach: If they have a GTA position, they need to grade assignments and exams, supervise lab work, and probably give a few lectures; and to research: Whether they are hired as GRAs or not, they still need to make progress on their degree.

Most graduate students are part-time employees as GTAs or GRAs. The emphasis here is on part-time. The typical contract, at least in my department of Computer Science, is 20 hours a week. However, everyone knows that this is an inside joke. GTA positions are notorious for taking more like 30 hours per week, leaving barely any time for the student’s own research. GRAs are even trickier to navigate as the separation between GRA work and the voluntary effort put towards finishing a degree is vague. This ambiguity allows many advisors to exploit their students. No wonder we read statements like “graduate students are more than six times as likely to experience depression and anxiety as compared to the general population” and “7.3% of graduate students had suicidal thoughts” in the media.

To add insult to injury, graduate assistants neither have the right to enjoy nationally recognized holidays nor to have a pre-specified number of annual sick or vacation days to take. These breaks, which are mental health necessities, are completely under the mercy of their Gods, the advisors. If humanity has learned anything from history, it is that wielding so much power in the hands of one individual often leads to misery. The more familiar I become with this community, the clearer the absolute power embodied in the advisor becomes. When I investigated in my department about the measures and tools the graduate assistant has at their disposal to counter their advisors’ abuse and harassment, the staple answer I got was that “they should sit and talk about it”. If the person were being extra helpful, they would mention the ombudsperson. It has always baffled me how stringent and enforceable the laws are when it comes to sexual harassment and conflicts of interest, as they should be, by means of policies such as Title IX and FERPA; yet, how trivial the laws are when it comes to other forms of abuse in the workplace, including but not limited to the verbal version of it.    

This bleak situation is especially true in the USA where employment regulations are almost non-existent, and unions are a thing of fairy tales. Not to digress, but it makes me chuckle to remember how, after 7 years of finishing my Master’s degree in Canada at McGill University, I still got a check for money owed after the graduate student union reached a settlement with the school.  

This pitiful state of graduate students has unfortunately albeit rightfully earned them the titles “free labor” and “slaves”. These terms have become so commonplace that students have sadly turned insensitive to them. The kind of insensitivity we see when a person turns their misery into comedy to ease the deep pain and fear. On top of it all, universities provide graduate students with an embarrassingly limited counseling and therapy services. Schools meagerly provide the student with a couple of free sessions a semester, which are barely even sufficient to establish a therapist-client relationship.

I wonder sometimes if all those administrators, deans, and professors recall their days as graduate students. I wonder whether they think it is the circle of life for every generation to pay the price again, or whether they just wiped out that episode from their collective memory… a consequence of their own trauma.