An account of my recent misadventures

When I started grad school and was awarded an assistantship, I was already working in a lab on campus as an hourly employee. They had to move me to a salaried employee since I could not be both hourly and salaried through the university. So a year and a half ago, we spend a couple of days trying to work things out and finally got it worked out that the MABE would pay all of my tuition and I could get a smaller assistantship through the IE dept for about 8 hours per week of work in the campus lab. If I was paid any more that that through my IE assistantship, they would have to split the cost of my tuition with MABE, which they didn't have the money to do. Having explained that, on to the more recent news....

I got a call last Wednesday at about 4:00 from my boss, Dave, who told me he had just gotten an email from one of the secretaries in the IE dept that I was being dropped from my assistantship with the MABE dept. This was a big issue for them because if it were true, my tuition waiver that was being payed by MABE would be taken away and all or part of my tuition would need to be picked up from the accounts for the on campus lab. They don't have the funds for this, so it was indeed a major issue that needed to get straightened out. I emailed Dr. Smith hoping to get a response by early Thursday morning since he is in charge of making the GA assignments for MABE. I never received any notice that I was not going to have an assistanship this semester, especially since Dr. Johnson had contacted me a few days before to ask me to teach a lab for him again. I never heard anything from Dr. Smith, so I went by his office Thursday afternoon. He confirmed that I was being dropped from my GA position because the three guaranteed semesters had run out (even though they are good for three semesters for a Master's student, I had heard from numerous professors that if you got a GA position you would have it until you finished your degree, so I didn't think I was going to lose it). I explained to him that Dr. Johnson had wanted me to teach one of the 345 lab sections for him (my section was the next day) and wanted to confirm that someone else had been lined up to teach it. He said it had already been taken care of and suggested if I wanted extra money to check with a few professors he named that needed graders for a class they were teaching. Apparently they have a shortage of GA's this semester and aren't giving out any new ones and need students to work for $10 as graders. So I went to look into this with a professor I had worked for last semester and agreed to be a grader for him. Just out of courtesy, I emailed Dr. Johnson to confirm what Dr. Smith had said and that there would be someone else teaching the lab section the next day since I didn't want no one to show up to lead the lab. Dr. Johnson replied back and was in disbelief because he still had me down as the teacher for that lab section and sounded a little pissed towards Dr. Smith asking him to let him know if he had hired someone else for it. This amazed me, but it really shouldn't have since I know how damn disorganized that whole department is anyway. So, when Dr. Smith finally looked into it he stated he had made a mistake and I was teaching the 345 lab section. Okay, that's great, but there is no way in hell I'm going to teach a section of that as an hourly employee without a tuition waiver when the other students doing the same job (there are 4 sections of the lab in that class) and getting a tuition waiver. So I wanted to clarify that I would be a GA and not hourly. After another long wait, Smith finally said I was to have the same stipend and tuition waiver I had during previous semesters.

So it seems that had worked out, but I was prepared for another twist in the story considering he didn't know what the hell he was talking about the first time I had gone to talk to him. So I met with my boss Dave and the guys at SIRC Friday morning to fill them in on the story and try to make some calls to ensure everything was straightened out. We called around to the IE office to confirm I was back listed as a GA through MABE, but the didn't show it. So Dave explained what had happened so far and basically said we were trying to do this covertly without talking to Smith to see if he was telling the truth or still full of it and clueless. So the IE secretary called one of the MABE secretaries she was friends with to try and clear it all up. The MABE office had no record that I was to be kept on their payroll as a GA, so she had to call Smith to make sure. Finally, it seems they have confirmed it all and I do have my GA position this semester. What a hell of a headache. I seriously do not know how they MABE department operates on a day-to-day basis....I really don't.

In addition, where I had thought Dave had been hinting around at offering me a job at SIRC before, I had not heard anything from him like that two or three months. When we were meeting in his office last Friday trying to get all of thsi straightened out, he asked me what I was doing after graduation. I replied "I don't know," and he said "Well, before you decide anything talk to us because we might have something here for you....if you are interested." I said I was very interested so hopefully that is an almost guaranteed job. Not sure of the pay or anything, but it would be a good, easy-going, low-stress place to work. All the benefits of a small business, my own office with a window, getting to stay local and be around family, and much lower cost of living than most of the places I would be applying for jobs so I would probably be able to buy a house almost right away.