“Mom Says It’s My Turn,” Says TA to Professor Using the Projector
Every classroom has a delicate system of power. There are the mighty professors on top, the power-hungry TAs beneath them, and the plebeian students at the very bottom scrounging for any morsel of attention from the teachers. This system is essential to the survival and order of this school. If this system were to fall apart, FSU responding to the coronavirus would be the second most chaotic thing to happen in our school’s history. But, in times of mass confusion, some of the TAs have grown anxious. In the coming absence of classes, one TA is moving to seize the means of production from the elite.
”ANARCHY!” proclaimed a revolutionary TA, Equality Jack, as he ninja-starred the computer mouse off the podium of DIF_0128. “Long have we, the underground graduate Teaching Assistant’s of this plutocratic campus, waited for an opening to rise up against the professors. We have suffered ten lifetimes and a million graduate years. But now, in the wake of classes being moved to Zoom, the chance has come. As we speak, my TA brethren and I are taking over every empty classroom and lecture hall we can get our hungry little hands-on. The projectors are only the beginning. Soon, we’ll have control of the emergency sirens around campus. We can blast a dramatic reading of our master’s thesis across campus, and no one can stop us!”
“I don’t understand why our own TAs would turn against us. They all love to answer all the emails asking for extensions and grade my failing class’s tests,” wondered Professor Tyrannical as he called them to class just because he wants some friends. “We make sure that all of our graduate students working with us are treated fairly. There’s a joke circulating that our TAs hate their jobs, but I am here to clear the rumors. See, we make sure everyone is barely paid and that everyone is functionally our secretary. That’s equality! Who hates equality? Communists, that’s who. Every TA who even thinks about breaking our status quo of equality is now wanted for high treason against this university.”
FSU security has determined that the relentless forces of TA revolutionaries may be too powerful to contain. They’ve advised that everyone vacate the campus at the earliest mandatory convenience--not only because of coronavirus but also the impending coup d’etat. These TAs’ absurd workload has eliminated the need for sleep or food, and their journey to world domination has already begun. Keep watch, comrades, for the TAs have risen like the sun over the new equality-in-the-classroom driven world that they are creating for themselves.