Part graduate student, part instructor, you teach undergraduates while pursuing your own degree, running sections, grading, and learning the craft by doing it. Teaching and being taught at the same time.
The work means leading discussion or lab sections, grading, holding office hours, and prepping, all squeezed around your own coursework and research. You work closely with faculty and students. The value is learning to teach by teaching, and the time pressure is real, since your degree comes first and last.
What's hard is juggling teaching duties with your own demands on modest pay. Mentorship and expectations vary by department, the grading can pile up, and the line between learning and labor blurs. How good the experience is depends a lot on your advisor and program.
It fits someone self-directed, curious, and able to juggle competing demands. If you need clear boundaries or steady income, the role can strain. But if you treat it as training for an academic career, and discover you actually enjoy teaching, the role tends to be genuinely formative.
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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