Communication among teaching assistants can be as complicated as communication among full time faculty members, so that power relationships influence the rhetoric they use when they talk about being students, teachers, and professionals. Analysis of the political dimensions of teaching assistant interaction in the English department at the Unversity of Dayton (Ohio) demonstrates how conversation plays a role in their development. Information comes from personal experience as well as from a questionnaire distributed to the teaching assistants in that department. The communication network that evolves among teaching assistants serves two main purposes: support and development. A division exists between new and experienced teaching assistants. Typically, inexperienced teaching assistants are more reluctant to discuss departmental policy and are less inclined to view faculty as peers. Discussion of personal matters is minimal, and office talk generally focusses on professional matters. Professional obligations, such as conference presentations and publications, are routinely discussed and emphasized as important facets of higher education. Finally, the power relationship between first and second year teaching assistants is an unequal one favoring the more experienced. (HB)