We hate the things that Disappoint us the Most Part II.

As many of you know,   I dropped out of McGill a couple of years ago, and that experience changed everything.    It’s really difficult to untangle or-as we would say back then,  unpack my experience there- but when I think of McGill, I think of the definitive moment at the end of my second term-when, exhausted and disappointed,   overcome with angst and feeling helpless that things were not as they should be,  I stopped and  shook my fist at the main gate.    It was a moment of futile honesty between me and the university,  one that would not be repeated.

I really hate that university-for accepting me into an virtually nonexistent program,   for not offering more than a repeated survey course,  and a course on Rousseau,   for not having faculty who were interested in being advisers, for offering no training,  NONE,  on running your section,  and above all,  for that smugness which  permeated from the administration that no one student should ever complain,  because that student was lucky enough to go to McGill.

You should also  know that I hate McGill deeply, passionately and irrationally.     If my time at McGill were  a story,  it would be an epic.    A boring,  smoke and caffeine fueled epic, but an epic nonetheless.     It is with the feeling of a scorned lover reading a blog about their ex  that I follow the TA strike.    Being a TA at McGill really sucked.    The pay was bad even three years ago,  to make it worse,  it wasn’t a practice to supplement the low pay  by waiving international or tuition fees.    I was admitted into another top Canadian graduate school(with an actual graduate program in my field),  which I stupidly declined,   and had I gone there, I would have made twice the TA wage as McGill.   If you’re only going to offer your TA’s $20 an hour,   then fees should be waived.   I suppose paying their TA’s more, particularly TA’s who are working on their Master’s, would undercut the purpose of accepting Master’s(particularly international) students-they are cash cows for the university.     Most American Universities have ceased terminal master’s programs altogether, only offering positions and funding to those people whom they can support.   I think it’s more honest-and you know they don’t really want you if they can’t  offer you funding.     McGill really gouges graduate students-in my program there were significantly more Master student’s that Phd’s,   which they did not fund in the least-and didn’t waive international fees for any master’s student.   Besides the tuition fees they also had an extremely cheap labor pool to TA their courses, and then got back most of their money paid in wages in fees.

Did I also mention they offered no training on how to TA courses?    Here at University of Bobois- Monica had to go through days of training-which incidentally, is also part of her contract.   It’s really unbelievable.

I occasionally think about how different my life would have been had I gone to the other Top Canadian university-and I wonder if I would have finished had things been different.   I don’t regret dropping out as much as I regret going to McGill in the first place.