In a first-year engineering course with an enrollment of approximately 1900 students per year, seventy-eight undergraduate engineering students' perceptions of their graduate teaching assistants were obtained using a modified Adjective Generation Technique. Based upon student feedback, researchers identified three themes of highest concern to the students: graduate teaching assistants' knowledge levels, their overall effectiveness, and their approachability. Examining the sequence of reflective words and informed by current literature, researchers found that most undergraduate students initially emphasized the knowledge level and the overall effectiveness (i.e., academic traits) of their graduate teaching assistants and then referred to the approachability of teaching assistants (i.e., personal traits). (Contains 3 figures.)