There are a lot of on and off campus jobs that you can pick up when you’re in college to help cover the mounting pile of student loan debt that you’re sure to be accumulating, but when considering what to do for a job during college, don’t just consider the immediate gratification (the money), consider also the long-term payout (hello, resume builders). Being a TA might not be the highest paying job on campus, and it can be time-consuming, but it’s an experience that’s worth so much more than the money you’ll make from doing it.

If you’re juggling job options while in college—trying to figure out what to keep and what to drop—and being a TA is among your choices, you should definitely take the opportunity of being a TA.

Being a TA is the best worst college job.

Let’s face it—college jobs can be a little sucky and dull. Among the jobs you may have to choose from, you could find yourself mindlessly cleaning, robotically entering information into computers, sorting mail, serving food, or filing paper work, among other things. There’s nothing wrong with any of these jobs; they’re all essential to a successful college environment and you might even enjoy doing some of them.

Being a TA is the best worst college job because you can’t be a TA anywhere else.

You may have the opportunity to clean, sort, serve, and file at other jobs depending on what avenues of employment you explore, but you’re not going to have the chance to be a TA again.

College is a special time in your life—ew, gag, how many times have you heard that? Let’s break things down for a second. College is—unless you go to grad school or become a professor—the only time in your life you will pursue education and enlightenment in such an organized, intense, and challenging environment. College is a “special” time in your life because while you’re in college it is your life. You don’t simply “go” to college—you livecollege.

Being a TA gives you the opportunity to take your college lifestyle to a completely different level.

You aren’t just doing menial work around campus, you’re working with professors in your major (or not, maybe you’re TAing a course that isn’t in your major, but that you did really well in) and interacting with new students and course material from a completely different perspective.

You’re not quite a “professor” in the classes you are a TA for, but you’re not a student either. You act more as an intermediary between the two groups using the professor's advisement to guide the students in a way that you—as a student—know will be helpful to them.

You’ll also learn to take college more and less seriously at the same time.

There are some things that new students stress out about more than they need to: small quizzes, journal entries, etc. Being a TA will teach you to stress out about classes a little less-- because it’s not about the grade you get, it’s about the things you learn. If you get an A in a course, but retain none of the material after the semester ends because you crammed for all the exams, have you really learned anything?

On the other hand, if you don’t get an A in a course, but you continue to talk about and be engaged with the material long after the course ends, applying it in your everyday life, have you really failed to make the mark?

As a TA you’ll learn very quickly how to spot the students who actually care about the material and are excited to learn and understand, even if it means going out on a limb and struggling, and the students who just want to pass the course and know how to say the right things at the right time. You’ll also spot the students who literally don’t care and are content to get a 32 on the midterm exam. Being a TA means that you’ll learn to double down on what’s actually important in college—dialogue—and let go of what’s unnecessarily stressful—competition and GPA pressure.

If you just want to make money, you can take any job in college. But if you want to develop your intellectual abilities on a deeper level, come to know your professors better, and make connections that will serve to benefit you far beyond your college career, be a TA. The education you’ll get and relationships you’ll form are worth the agony of having to read several dozen poorly punctuated essays now and again.