My God, am I afraid
Things were going relatively nicely. Today the CS department sent me a rather cruel email saying how due to the whole fiasco last quarter they may ban me from applying as a CS TA going forward. They also wanted me to withdraw my application from ECE TA for this coming quarter, but they wouldn’t tell me any other information. So basically they are threatening me to withdraw my applications to other departments to even have a chance to TA for CS, all while saying they may just ban me from it. Never mind how several CS professors have requested me as their TA, or how I have a near-perfect TA evaluation right now. None of that matters I guess. Doesn’t matter how much extra time I’ve put in, or how much students and professors have been appreciative of the work I’ve done.
On top of this, this all happened because the ECE department saw my email asking “if it would be possible” and then proceeded to not respond to me after a few days sent a harshly worded email telling me about how horrible I was for asking that, and implying they were dropping me. IMPLYING. They didn’t even tell me what had happened, I found out right before the quarter started through the professor I was going to TA for originally. They also didn’t respond to any of my follow-up emails. I remember I felt like throwing up for weeks and was on the verge of panic attacks frequently. But no, none of that matters. I’m being punished for the ECE department’s actions, and I don’t know what I could have done reasonably in hindsight. I asked if it was feasible, as I received the offer from CS extremely late in the quarter, and the ECE department didn’t communicate back to me and just dropped me. And now the CS department handler refused to respond to my email, and only responded with “I will not have this back and forth” and that she only wants to know if I have rescinded my application to the ECE department. She did not then respond to the email confirming I had rescinded my application, without clarifying any of the other things she had threatened me with.
I get these people are busy. And I get what happened last quarter made more work for both departments – but I did not intend for this to happen, and I can reasonably say that this was not my fault. I am now being punished by both departments for each other’s actions. I’m now caught in the middle and I may not have a job going forward. I just want to cry. It doesn’t matter what I do. God I just want this to end.