A question to all you grad students current and former.

[cssmall]

When you first started grad school did you come home tired, grumpy and all together foul until allowed a moment to lie down?

[unsavedtrash]

1. 1st year grad student here and the answer is yes. After the nap a nice

cold beer always helps too.

[cssmall]

3. I was just making sure.

That's a good idea. Got a couple in the fridge.

[EstimatedProphet]

2. Yeah, and stayed that way the entire time

Both degrees. I think we all were, that's why we'd go drink as often as possible.

[blonndee]

4. This is my LAST semester of grad school - THANK GOD--

and YES, I have spent the last two and a half years tired, grumpy, and all together foul...even AFTER I have spent a moment lying down.

Grad school is boot camp for the truly masochistic.

[cssmall]

6. So then can we just come to the conclusion that academic politics

come from the formative graduate school years? I mean, I was walking to class today (I live barely two blocks away) and thinking to myself that cultural stratification is not a positivist thing, it follows a normal Gaussian curve. :freak:

[blonndee]

8. Uh...I'm getting OUT of academia cuz of that kinda talk.

LOL

Seriously, I was at happy hour today and when the token poseur showed up and was STILL (after two years) talking about Derrida (at fucking HAPPY hour, AFTER TWO years, don't forget, same guy) I realized I had to come home to take care of the dogs. And I remembered why I'm not going to get a PhD after all.

Not that discussing Derrida is a BAD thing, not that there's anything WRONG with that. I'm just burnt on it.

[cssmall]

9. Nice.

Anthropology, Sociology or Philosophy?

There is this graduate student in the psych wa..... I mean, department. Anyway, he stands in violation of personal space, has really bad breath, talks about Freud and Pavlov as if gods and insists that he can out drink me, which has been proven not once, not twice, but three damn times.

[blonndee]

10. None of the three. Even worse: English.

He THINKS he's a philosopher..what's worse is that it's become infectious.

Your guy sounds like a PITA, but THIS guy. OMG. He tries to convince people, seriously, that he's a cyborg and uses Donna Haraway as support for this claim. I really think he uses phrases and portions of philosophy that he may not really understand. It often seem irrelevant to the conversations at hand. At the same time, he's really academically ambitious and very traditional when it comes to what will get him a "tenure track position." He and a few others are like this...they pretend to be all original but really just conform to what will make them the big $$ and get them job security. That's why they're not only poseurs, but posers.

Not EVERYone that's a grad student in English is like this, but I have to say, most of us who are getting out, aren't.

So what's your poison? Anthro?

[cssmall]

11. Anthro.

Archaeology actually. In the wonderful debates on whether we're a science or a humanistic discipline. We've had forty years to figure the shit out.

Personally, I know a lot of people (having stayed at the same institution for my masters simply because it's the best for what I want to do) in my field that want to quote Derrida, which is fine, but. . . fuck man.

Tell him that he obviously couldn't keep up on the information superhighway and that he should kindly exit. I'm sure that would make people happy. :evilgrin:

[liontamer]

5. still like that

three years in. I've just decided that the solution is to start drinking (i almost never drink normally).

[La Lioness Priyanka]

15. well how much are you drinking now?

[liontamer]

27. wine on tuesday

wine on thursday(australia day) wine tonight

[Blue-Jay]

7. I quite enjoyed grad school.

The fact that I got laid a lot might have something to do with it, however.

The classes were interesting, too.

[Orangepeel]

12. You get to lie down?

:D

Yes. The first semester of my Ph.D. program was the worst period of my life.

It got better, and by the second year I figured out that I was supposed to be learning an entirely new way to approach problems, that it was okay that basically everything I had learned up to that point was pretty much useless, and that I was on a new, exponential learning curve. Once I stopped being defensive about justifying that I knew something and just started to explore ideas, it became a lot of fun.

Now, 10 years out, I look back on that time very fondly (well, all but the first semester).

[cssmall]

13. Thank you.

[aquaman]

14. finished grad school five years ago.....

I survived, my marriage survived, and everything is fine. However, it was difficult and I didn't take much of a break for two years. All worth it though. Good luck to you!!!!

[jobycom]

16. You've seen this list, I take it?

...you can analyze the significance of appliances you cannot operate.
...your carrel is better decorated than your apartment.
...you have ever, as a folklore project, attempted to track the progress of your own joke across the Internet.
...you are startled to meet people who neither need nor want to read.
...you have ever brought a scholarly article to a bar.
...you rate coffee shops by the availability of outlets for your laptop.
...everything reminds you of something in your discipline.
...you have ever discussed academic matters at a sporting event.
...you have ever spent more than $50 on photocopying while researching a single paper.
...there is a microfilm reader in the library that you consider "yours."
...you actually have a preference between microfilm and microfiche.
...you can tell the time of day by looking at the traffic flow at the library.
...you look forward to summers because you're more productive without the distraction of classes.
...you regard ibuprofen as a vitamin.
...you consider all papers to be works in progress.
...professors don't really care when you turn in work anymore.
...you find the bibliographies of books more interesting than the actual text.
...you have given up trying to keep your books organized and are now just trying to keep them all in the same general area.
...you have accepted guilt as an inherent feature of relaxation.
... you reflexively start analyzing those greek letters before you realize that it's a sorority sweatshirt, not an equation.
.....you find yourself explaining to children that you are in "20th grade".
.....you start refering to stories like "Snow White et al."
.....you frequently wonder how long you can live on pasta without getting scurvy
.....you look forward to taking some time off to do laundry
.....you have more photocopy cards than credit cards
.....you wonder if APA style allows you to cite talking to yourself as "personal communication"

[unsavedtrash]

17. that's great. where did you find it?

[jobycom]

18. It's an old list, most grad school web pages have it posted somewhere.

I found it here by Googling. http://jokes.empstudios.com/academic/gradpos.html

[Digit]

19. series question for grad students....

My daughter is finishing up her bachelors and looking to take a year off to work in her field before grad school. (this is to discern where she wants to specialize)
Her father said she could not take a year off and be picked up again on his health insurance due to taking a year off. Does this sound like it is true?
She does not want to skip a year of health insurance...although she does not have any health issues.

Shit, I am 54 and don't have health insurance, but this is her thang.

BTW, does anyone else have a hard time purposely mispelling for DU's sake?
I'm series!

[cssmall]

23. I would think so, that's how they get out of that whole paying BS.

[LisaL]

20. I had lots of fun. In fact, I wish I stayed in graduate school

for years and years.

[fishwax]

21. I've actually adjusted to grad school better than I thought I would

I was extremely busy my first semester (last semester), but not overly tired, perhaps because the last few years I was doing undergrad work I was also working full time. So in terms of the time investment it isn't that different, but the work I do is much more enjoyable than before :)

[ChoralScholar]

22. I'm teaching full-time AND going to grad school....

and my wife doesn't understand why I need to lay down for 45 minutes or an hour.

[Ramsey]

24. Are you kidding?

That state of being is the true essence of graduate education.

[TheBaldyMan]

25. BSc = bullshit certificate PhD = piled high & deeper n/t

[hfojvt]

26. Nope

That did not start until about 13 weeks in the semester.