Talking to a graduate assistant is tough. It’s not that they’re mean spirited; they just don’t have much time to chat.

With the responsibilities of both a coach and a student, graduate assistants are some of the busiest people on campus. In her first semester as the GA for the NIU women’s soccer team, Sara Kloosterman’s work day will run around 19 hours on average.

“I am usually up by 5 a.m. doing school work in the library and I usually won’t get done with all my work until midnight,” Kloosterman said. “My only free time during the day comes from 2 p.m. until practice starts at 3:30.”

With such a draining schedule, Kloosterman has found that priorities are often difficult to keep straight.

“You would hope that schooling would be number one,” Kloosterman said. “But sometimes you have to make sure the team has what it needs, and then try to fit in school as best you can. I try to do everything at 100 percent, but that is kind of impossible.”

Graduate assistants are often forced to change the way they approach school work upon arriving at graduate school. One of the first things Joe Tripodi did when he became the offensive GA for the NIU football team was pick up a planner at the bookstore.

“In my undergraduate work at Northwestern, I was kind of a procrastinator,” Tripodi said. “As a GA though, I have to stay a week ahead of myself. For example, last week I needed to have four games from Buffalo completely broken down on film so the full time coaches could watch it.”

Considering the large amount of weight placed on graduate assistants, head coach Jerry Kill and the NIU football team are rather particular about whom they bring into the program.

“When you’re looking for a graduate assistant, you have to know what is going to work for your team,” Kill said. “We’re looking for mature guys that can multi-task. Not a lot of young people can handle what we throw at them.”

Kill has often been able to gauge the maturity of a potential graduate assistant by coaching them as a student-athlete. Tripodi played collegiately at Northwestern, however, meaning Kill had to gauge the former Wildcat through other means.

“In 28 years of coaching, I have taken a lot guys out of our own program and hired them as graduate assistants,” Kill said. “Before bringing them on, we really need to know their work ethic. I didn’t know Joe, but I knew he was married and that can tell you a lot about the work ethic of a person. That told me that he had a goal and a vision.”

After graduate school, Tripodi and Kloosterman will both have a graduate degree and collegiate coaching experience. Which begs the question, which field will they decide to enter into?

“I love coaching,” Tripodi said. “So, right now I plan on pursuing a career in that field. Working with coach [Matt] Limegrover and the guys during practice is really what I love to do and that’s what I want to do in the future.”

While Kloosterman doesn’t plan on dedicating her entire future to coaching, she does plan on implementing soccer into her career.

“I would like to use my degree to get into a youth organization,” Kloosterman said. “Hopefully a job where I could manage the soccer coaching division for an organization like the YMCA. Coaching young kids and helping promote the sport is the ultimate goal.”

Graduate assistants at NIU have to deal with different variables and challenges specific to their sport. Albeit, both GA’s interviewed for this story uttered one phrase about the nature of their jobs on numerous occasions.

“It’s crazy,” Tripodi and Kloosterman said.