Why getting to know your profs and TAs can help you through your undergrad

 Daniel Bitonti

There you are, standing in line waiting to get back your first graded paper of the year. Sure, you’re a little nervous but you’ve worked hard and you assure yourself a good grade is what waits.

When the assignment is finally in your hands, you rifle through the stapled pages and there you see it: 53.

For a select few students, getting good grades at university is a matter of reading the assignment, doing the work and hammering out something on their laptop. For most, it takes a little more. 

“Oftentimes when I give out low grades it’s because the student misunderstood the assignment,” says Rashaad Bhamjee, a Ph.D geography student who has been a teaching assistant (TA) for several geography courses. “Some students will never ask questions. That’s fine if you believe you fully understand the material. But if you don’t, we’re here for you.”

While professors in the arts, humanities and social sciences will also run seminars and mark papers in addition to lecturing, get used to TAs – for the most part graduate students – being the ones grading your work and leading seminars. In the science disciplines, TAs are often responsible for running labs which form a large part of courses.

Bhamjee believes too few students take the opportunity to reap the benefits of forming a good working relationship with TAs and professors.

“When you come to our office hours, it gives you a chance to learn in a one-on-one setting. In lectures or in labs students are often nervous to speak up in front of other people,” he said.  “It’s not always that assignments with low grades were poorly done. It’s that students didn’t understand the expectations, the requirements or the nuances of each assignment.”

While making the effort to form a relationship doesn’t automatically mean you’ll get a higher mark, you’ll certainly get a better grasp of the material, and it doesn’t hurt that professors and TAs can put a face to your name.

Most new students don’t have a handle on writing, reading and studying at the university level until well into first-year. And for many students it’s not until they spend time with a TA or a professor that they wrap their heads around it.

Actively pursuing a relationship with professors and TAs also helps prepare students for upper level courses that have fewer assignments and less room for error. In many humanities and social sciences, class participation can account for upwards of 50 per cent of your final mark. While its not always easy talking about material with professors and TAs early on, they can provide you with support through this process.

Both TAs and professors were once undergrads themselves and understand the pressures of being in a very new environment.