My graduate degree (masters) is in educational linguistics. My first semester I took an intro to linguistics class. That semester, the intro class was really big so the department chose to split the class up by whether students were enrolled in a masters or doctoral program. The doctoral section was taught by the regular professor while the masters section was taught by a doctoral student. I’ll call her Mary. This was immediately discouraging because it seemed like the university was basically saying that masters students were not worth being taught by an expert in the field, and that someone who seemed just a bit ahead of us was good enough.
I was further discouraged when I realized Mary was really only slightly ahead of us in her studies. One point I remember specifically was when we had to memorize a chart of all the phonetic vowel sounds. She told us to memorize them and that we would have to draw the chart out on the final exam. She never actually taught what the chart meant though or why it was important. She even said she never memorized any of it herself. I saw no reason to learn something my teacher never learned. The only reason she exposed us to it was because it was on the final exam (which was still designed by the real professor). So I saw no reason to learn it other than to get a good grade.
One thing I would have done differently was to push to be part of the doctoral students’ section even though I was a masters student. Looking back, that may have worked. The real professor & I had a good relationship… she ended up being my advisor. I could have brought it up with the real professor. Also, I could have questioned Mary a bit more. I would have asked her if we, as her students, should be tested on things she, as our teacher, did not know.