As a teaching assistant before and a research assistant now, I say technically it's a job. You're expected to perform atleast 40 hours of research, often if no

As a teaching assistant before and a research assistant now, I say technically it's a job. You're expected to perform atleast 40 hours of research, often if not 1.5x more. Experimental research involves setting up and conducting them, while theoretical research involves standardizing the set of rules that one should seek in an experiment: modeling. All kinds of work involve literature review, writing, designing plots, coming up with scientifically sound creative ideas. All that with tight deadlines too. I don't see why this should be any less than a job.