PSA for Students #9
Definition Time.
Graduate Student: Someone who has achieved their bachelor's degree and is now pursuing a master's or doctorate degree.
Graduate students are NOT graduating fourth years. The fact that you've been in college at least 3 years and do not know the difference between an undergraduate and a graduate student scares me. Who the hell do you think's been teaching your classes? Professors? Ha!
Undergrads, stop sending me your resumes. I'm tired of it. I only want graduate students (as I say multiple times in my ad). If you don't know what that means, you're not qualified for the job.
Graduate Student: Someone who has achieved their bachelor's degree and is now pursuing a master's or doctorate degree.
Graduate students are NOT graduating fourth years. The fact that you've been in college at least 3 years and do not know the difference between an undergraduate and a graduate student scares me. Who the hell do you think's been teaching your classes? Professors? Ha!
Undergrads, stop sending me your resumes. I'm tired of it. I only want graduate students (as I say multiple times in my ad). If you don't know what that means, you're not qualified for the job.
Labels: PSAs
posted by Vampire Librarian at 5:16 PM
8 Comments:
Damn, I thought that kind of confusion only happened at my library. Just yesterday I had some kid filling out an online financial aid form. She needed help knowing the difference between an associate's degree and a bachelor's. After I explained that one, she still was not sure which item from the pulldown menu to pick. No, masters degree was not it either. After talking to her a little, it was "First Bachelors Degree" that she had to choose.
By the way, she is a junior in college.
To quote Bart Simpson, "Ay Caramba!"
DWB, I'm sorry that I'm not the only one.
Just playing the devil's advocate, but are you sure they didn't know the difference? I remember as an undergrad, a few of us would apply to TA openings. We knew that the departments wanted graduate students, but we also knew that the university did have a pay grade for TAs without a bachelor's, and in crunch times would hire a promising 4th year (though it was exceptionally rare).
Anon,
Maybe you're right. Maybe some of the applicants think I'm extremely desperate, and Heaven knows, I'd feel better hiring a few 4th years that have been on campus since freshman year rather than grad students who'll be setting their first foot on campus this week, but I'm pretty explicit in the job ad, and I get far too many undergrad apps for them all to think it's just a long shot.
Most of them just see the pay rate and thing 'Ooh, 9.50/hr! I want that!' Not reading the job description or requirements.
But thank you for the different perspective. I hadn't considered it. I don't know how often on campus undergrads are hired for grad jobs, which means it could be done.
Well, to be fair I think there are vastly more undergrads applying and hoping for jobs they're not qualified for than there are undergrads who actually get and hold such jobs. At my old school (University of Toronto) I only know of one or two such undergrad TAs (spread over 4 years there), and at least one of those was in math (which often plays by its own set of rules). There was also another case of a grad student in one of my classes serving as the marker for that class (the prof would mark his assignments, then he would mark everyone else's).
So, you're probably right. The vast majority of undergrads applying for your job posting, sadly, don't seem to read or understand the requirements... if they did, and were hoping otherwise, then they should have included a cover letter explaining themselves!
Heaven knows, I'd feel better hiring a few 4th years that have been on campus since freshman year rather than grad students who'll be setting their first foot on campus this week
It's too bad there isn't an undergraduate library sciences program to recruit from...
It would be nice, Anon, but no library science programs here.
I find that undergraduate students registering for ILLiad, our ILL system, for the first time frequently say they are graduate students or even faculty, probably assuming that a) we don't check and b) they will get extra privileges that way. Luckily, neither ot those is true. We just change them to the correct affiliation when we match them against their circulation record.
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