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Home » Unfairly Dropped as Lab Instructor While Writing Dissertation

Unfairly Dropped as Lab Instructor While Writing Dissertation

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I actually no longer work at Hunter College, but I would like to tell my story.

Years ago I was a graduate student at CUNY-GC and was teaching as a lab instructor for Introduction to Physical Anthropology at Hunter College. The person who was in charge of determining who can teach which section of the lab was my dissertation advisor. When I fell behind due to the stress of writing the dissertation, I was dropped from his list of favorite students and no longer offered to teach as a lab instructor. As younger students were filling in the teaching slots, we older students were dropped as well. Lab instructors had to come in at least half an hour before the lab begins to set up lab materials and it took another half hour after the lab to dismantle the specimens and equipment, we never got compensated for the amount of time we spent preparing the labs. But back then as a graduate student, I was unable to speak up, because by having an adversary relationship with your advisor meant the loss of teaching opportunity/money and jeopardizing the smooth completion of dissertation. We were put in very difficult positions and endured the insecure working/studying conditions.


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