Archived comment by Saint:
The store I work at has unionized ants. They only come out and work for a couple of hours, the rest of the time they are nowhere to be found. I doubt they're army ants, though, so no relevance to speak of.

Archived comment by Arlene:
but they could be a unionized army.

Archived comment by Phil:
Nothing to add, I just always feel sorry for the posts that can't break the double digit comment mark.

Archived comment by umrguy:
"Become a GSI and find out the 212 ways that you can be an army of one..."

Archived comment by anson2:
Well, as a former Chem GSI at Berkeley myself, let me put it in terms that y'all can understand. The average Chem. GSI (and I presume applies to other majors too) has to do the following their first semester at Cal:

1. Take 2-3 very, very hard graduate chemistry courses themselves.

2. Find a place to live while they're new to the area/country (almost all GSI's are at least new to the area).

3. Identify who's going to be their research advisor and determine if not their life's work, at least who will be their demi-god for their career in graduate school.

4. Teach labs, and grade papers for a professor who really doesn't want to do any work him/herself and demands absolute obeidence to their smallest demand.

Given those 4 priorities, the GSI's (who at Cal in Chemistry are generally the top students from their state or country) quickly realize that number 4 is the lowest priority and put absolutely no time into it.

So basically GSIs are the ones who do all the work (they also in Science do all the research) while the Professors get to tell them what and how to do it. And they're not only poor (compared to the students who are usually being supported by their parents) they're seriously overworked.

Boy did that sound like a lament or what? And its been over 20 years since I was a GSI!

Archived comment by Toan:
Kinda like the Taliban.

Archived comment by just plain lazy at work today:
Eve - Glad to hear nothing has changed on the GSI front since my days at Cal 10 years ago. When I took Statistics for Dummies, both my professor and my GSI were Korean and knew less about speaking English than I knew about statistics. Then there was the semester (or two or three) that the GSIs went out on strike in an attempt to negotiate a more favorable contract. No matter how many times they tried this, the result was always the same . . . they'd eventually come crawling back to work after achieving exactly NOTHING. (The undergrads benefitted from the strikes, however, because we were sometimes given the option to take a class Pass/Fail just because our GSI had deserted us.) This long history of Cal GSIs being disgruntled, downtrodden workers might provide some context for the comment about GSIs being barefoot and poor. But I must say, I don't have much sympathy for their plight, because some of us actually had to take out massive student loans to pay for our graduate level education (law school, med school, etc.) - at least most GSIs receive stipends that enable them to finish their degrees with minimal debt.

Anyway enough ranting and reminiscing. Back to work (gotta pay off those loans . . .).

Archived comment by Matt:
I know almost zilch about CS, Eve, but that was a really funny link. Heh.

Archived comment by Eve:
Umrguy, our GSIs are supposed to each teach a discussion/lab section as well. Some do. Some rather spectacularly don't, as described here.

Honestly though, language barriers, incredible fear of public speaking, and apathy are the real problems with most bad GSIs. I've had a lot of good ones too, they're just far less interesting.

Archived comment by umrguy:
I've personally never heard a professor "muble". Mumble, maybe, but...

Anyway, as a grad student, and a GTA (Graduate Teaching Assistant) - comparable to your GSIs, except in my case (and others') I actually teach a section of the class, not just sit there and be available to answer questions and do grading - I actually get paid relatively well for a semester of work. 'Course, right now, 'bout half of that will be paying the bills, and the rest needs to be saved up for next semester and a new computer....

Archived comment by Karin:
Not being in grad school myself, i can't really comment, but the profs I have had as an undergrad seem to be the types who would bicker admist themselves because they all have to be right.

Case in point, a story I heard about my anthro prof: She was lecturing on tolerance and understanding as relating to other cultures when some work men started doing something loud in the hall. She runs out there and yells "What the hell do you think you're doing? I'm trying to teach a class in there" and so on and so forth, not realizing that she still had the little mircrophone still attached to her blouse and turned on to full power.

Archived comment by Matt:
Rarely have I so wished for conversational context more than on this particular posting.

GSIs really are the service unit that keep professors running strong. I don't know quite what that means right now, but I'm sure it'll make sense in the morning.