So, I’m sure I haven’t mentioned this, but I totally love the show Friday Night Lights, and if you haven’t watched it, I think you should Netflix or Hulu it from the very beginning (or go to Amazon and buy the DVDs, I don’t know how you get your media). That show is so authentic, and I love the “Coach” character so much, and I like football anyway, but it uses the game of football to further the narrative, and there are just so many good things to say about it, I don’t even know where to start. It is for sure in my Top Ten Shows, along with The Wire and several others.
However.
This season there is a b-storyline going on with one of the characters, and it involves a college freshman sleeping with her History T.A., and frankly, I am totally disappointed in the writers for going a direction that is so cliché, because not only does that action not follow the moral compass of the character (Julie Taylor, the coach’s daughter), but it simply does not take into account how rarely that actually happens, and how freaking DIFFICULT grad school is, and how poor you are, and how hard you have to work and how much ass you have to kiss even to GET that T.A. job, and how even when you get it, it only pays $12,000 a year, but you’re happy, because at least now you can pay for food instead of adding on that expense to your already GIGANTIC student loan, and how you’re so into your own academic head by that point you can’t even have a conversation with another grad student, much less an 18 year old COLLEGE FRESHMAN, for God’s sake.
I guess I’m just tired of shows falling back on that “Don’t Stand So Close to Me” storyline, because it’s cheap and easy. I feel like of all shows, this one could have either not gone that direction with the storyline, or done something realistic with a grad student for once. There were so many things they could have done with a character who goes off to college, rather than to have her just get seduced by her History T.A., which by the way, now that I am getting all huffy again, THEY GIVE YOU A LECTURE ABOUT AND MAKE YOU SIGN A PAPER AND EVERYTHNG, BECAUSE IT IS A REAL JOB AND SLEEPING WITH YOUR STUDENTS IS OFF LIMITS. I went to grad school for two years (before I conceded defeat and left with a regular Master’s degree), and was a T.A. for one and during that whole time, I never saw one T.A. sleep with a student. The other grad students? Yes. The faculty? Yes. Maybe even a student that had once taken your class and is now just a college senior? Yes (actually, I am the college senior in that example, and my History T.A. was a lovely person and we ended up dating even when I went to grad school, and we are still friends. Hi Bob!). College students with other college students? For sure—isn’t that actually a requirement of college? But Teaching Assistant and student they are currently T.A.’ing for?
Nope. Not cool. This gets us into a whole OTHER topic, which is “Grad School Politics.” First of all, if you do this and the professor you’re T.A.’ing for finds out, they pull your Assistantship, and then not only do you have no money, but you have no academic future, because the professor that had to pull your TA-ship is going to end up grading a bunch of papers themselves, and then they will be mad at you, and then they will make sure you never do anything else in that department, so all that time you’ve spent getting into grad school and politicking and dogsitting for your advisor when he’s on sabbatical is all out the window. Since all of this is made 100% clear the first moment of your first day in grad school, no grad student I have ever known will even sit in their office with a student WITH THE DOOR CLOSED, dude. Maybe my guy grad school friends will weigh in on this and call me crazy (Andy? Kirk? Hey Elise/ Erica/ Katie/Anna, what was the name of that tall guy with the tattoos?) but I never even saw a male T.A. talking at length to a coquettish teenage student, just because a college freshman’s mind is made of Skittles, and they are coming to you for help with something, and you honestly feel like you have to protect them in some way or they are going to flunk out of the entire academic system, and this makes you feel oddly parental, and exploiting that authority would just be gross. Yucky. While we’re at it, let me just throw this out to my grad school ladies—Elise/ Erica/ Katie/ Anna, did any of YOU ever sleep with an impressionable freshman? I would bet good money that none of you ever did.
The other reason why that portrayal of a grad student/ T.A., especially in a University-level History department, is just really wrong, is that the actor playing the T.A. just doesn’t look tired enough. Where are his eyebags, man? Where is his scruffy facial hair? Where is his ubiquitous stack of arcane yet required reading material and the worried look that belies the fact that with all those papers to grade, and office hours, and coursework, and everything else, HE IS NEVER GOING TO GET ALL THAT READING DONE?
You probably think I am exaggerating, but you guys– one quarter in grad school I had this “Independent Study” type course, and this meant I had to come up with a topic and then meet with the professor every week, and then he would assign me reading material and we would discuss it, and one week, HE ASSIGNED ME WAR & PEACE. WAR & PEACE. For discussion the next week. And I read it. And then I died and came back to life. And that is why when I wrote a novel and then had to re-write the entire novel for a big publisher, I was like “Meh, could be worse, at least it’s not War & Peace in a week.”
During grad school I started having this recurring dream that I was doing the reading for that week, and somehow I knew I was asleep, and at a certain point I would always go “This is so awesome—I figured out how to read in my sleep—NOW I WILL BE ABLE TO FINISH THE READING BEFORE SEMINAR.”
So, my only point is, I don’t like the way grad students are always portrayed on shows, like they have so much free time to be hanging around in clean clothes and going to faculty parties and sleeping with 18 year olds instead of what they are actually doing, which is reading, and grading papers, and trying to look smart in seminar, and reading, and reading, and writing papers, and reading, and playing BS politics to be able to get another low-paying TA job, and reading, and kissing ass to try to get published so one day when you get your PhD you have the hope of networking your way into a job in a town where they have actual power lines, and reading. I actually think it would be funny if someone did a whole tv show about graduate school, and just how ridiculous it is, and how no matter how hard you try, you are never, NEVER going to finish the reading assignment.
In conclusion, that storyline bugs. Now, please go read the complete works of Orestes, and let’s discuss for next week.
