Pros
With my graduate research position. I had a decent amount of flexibility in research topic. I was able to overlap my paid research with my PhD progress. I had health insurance that sort of covered what I needed (therapy). And my boss (PhD advisor) was pretty reasonable. But I was one of the lucky ones.
Cons
My friends who weren't white, able bodied, or men had many many stories to tell me of their discrimination. Being asked to leave the country, holding student-visa's over GRA's heads to overwork them, discriminatory wages, having their research findings shot down off-handedly after years of rigorous and fruitful effort. Graduate students have less rights for solving disputes at VT, compared to graduate students elsewhere. Luckily a battle was recently won to improve grad student pay, but that doesn't fix all the problems, and I saw many at VT.
