While earning your own graduate degree, you teach: running sections, grading, and holding office hours, often the instructor undergraduates actually see most. Teaching and learning at the same time.
Work mixes leading discussion or lab sections, grading, and office hours, wedged around your own coursework and research. You're often the face undergraduates interact with most. Translating dense material for struggling students is the craft, and you're learning to teach while you teach, set to the academic calendar.
The squeeze is juggling teaching with your own degree on modest pay. Grading can pile up fast, student preparation varies, and how much support or autonomy you get depends on the department. The role is temporary by design, a stage on the way to something else.
It fits someone organized, patient, and able to juggle competing demands. If you resent time away from your own work, the load can frustrate. But if you discover you enjoy teaching, and like helping students through hard material, the role can be unexpectedly formative, even career-shaping.
Where this role sits in the broader career landscape — and where it can take you.
Roles like this one sit within a broader occupational category. The numbers below reflect that full landscape — helpful for context, but your specific experience will depend on level, specialty, and where you work.
Truest gives you tools to understand your strengths, explore roles that fit, and plan your next move.
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