Surviving Your Stupid, Stupid Decision to Go to Grad School

by Adam Ruben

  Teaching Assistant

  Grad students recommending grad students? Preposterous! You really think your twenty-four-year-old TA from Intro to Psychology has an ounce of clout with an admissions committee? “But I know my TA,” you’re probably saying, “and I’ve never talked to my professor.” That’s like a restaurant critic saying, “I’ve never tasted the food, but I’ve developed quite a relationship with the napkin.” Sounds to me like someone squandered valuable office hours, which are meant to be meet-your-professor schmooze-a-thons.

  Non-Academic Employer

  If you have letters from one science professor and one humanities professor, consider balancing these with a note from your shift supervisor at Red Lobster. Sure, such a letter may not attest to your academic abilities. And you’re practically telling the admissions committee that your most relevant skill is your ability to make large margaritas. But if the letter smells like those warm cheesy biscuits, you’re in.

  Clergyperson

  If, rather than reading good books, you spent your college career reading the Good Book, you might ask your clergyperson for a reference letter. You might also end up with a letter full of comments unlikely to help your cause, such as “He was the cutest altar boy ever” or “I spent her formative years convincing her that evolution is a myth. Undo that, Professor Smarty Pants.”

  Athletic Coach

  Beware! This tactic may have worked very well to get you into college, but it won’t work for grad school. For college, these recommendations usually contain a total of two sentences, typically something like, “She captained the all-state rowing team. You want that.” And colleges actually climb all over one another to admit the student. “I don’t care if he’s functionally illiterate!” the university president screams, “he can throw a ball through a hoop!” Grad schools, however, have no such equivalent; no one has ever been admitted so that their department’s softball team can totally trounce the Mechanical Engineering department’s softball team.

  Parent

  Seriously? This is the best you can come up with? “If Mom says I have a good work ethic, it must be true!” Your only hope of having a parent’s letter get you into grad school is if your parent (a) teaches at a university, (b) has a different last name from yours, and (c) can refrain from calling you “my wittle dumpling.”

  “Available Upon Request”

  Writing this magical phrase tells the admissions committee that, in order to hear from your references, they’ll need to ask you specifically. It also neglects the fact that the application does ask you specifically. But if you plan ultimately never to submit any reference letters … yeah, you could go this route.

  “Available Upon Bequest”

  Writing this magical phrase tells the admissions committee that they can have their recommendation letters when they pry them from your cold, dead hands.

  Caste of Thousands

  Chickens may seem haphazard. But watch them eat, and you’ll notice that their society obeys a rigidly stratified “pecking order,” with the most important chickens eating first. Typically, these are the chickens who have tenure.

  Your school has a pecking order, too, one that dates back to feudalism. While some elements of the university system have evolved since the Middle Ages (thirteenth-century Byzantine scholars probably didn’t have wireless Internet, for example—though try explaining that to a group of under-grads), some medieval practices remain intact, in particular the idea that the many serve the few.

  Guess which group you’re in! Here’s a hint: Your school has many grad students.

  This diagram illustrates your level of importance within the university hierarchy. (And just so you know, though they don’t appear in the pyramid, you do rank below tenured chickens.)

  3

  Grad Student Life

  YOU WEREN’T GOING TO DO MUCH WITH YOUR TWENTIES ANYWAY

  MERRIAM-WEBSTER defines life as “an organismic state characterized by capacity for metabolism, growth, reaction to stimuli, and reproduction.”

  In this sense, grad students technically display the qualities of life, in that they

  a. metabolize as much free food as they can steal,

  b. grow beards or leg hair from inattention to hygiene,

  c. react to the amount of work they have to do tonight with incredulity and screams of pure terror, and

  d. reproduce anything their advisors ask them to photocopy.

  Contrarily, the Oxford English Dictionary defines life as “something grad students do not have.”

  What constitutes grad student life? How do advanced degree candidates spend their non-working hours? And, most important, which pieces don’t fit in the other chapters of this book? Let’s find out.

  Old School: A Brief History of Grad Students

  Philosopher George Santayana once said that those who do not recall their history are doomed to repeat it. Or maybe Winston Churchill said that. I don’t know. I can’t recall my history.

  Grad students have roamed the earth for millennia, evolving from single-cell forms (paramecia were known as “the grad students of eukaryotic protozoa”) to the stooped, hairy, grunting creatures of the Pleistocene epoch (Homo academicus), to the stooped, hairy, grunting creatures of today.

  Let’s take a look at our shared past. In this section, we’ll activate the Wayback Machine, fire up that flux capacitor, and, uh, do whatever Urkel did when he traveled back in time. Annoy Carl Winslow, I think. And all of us, too.

  And remember: Those who do not recall their history are doomed to repeat it. Did I already write that? I can’t recall.

  C. 2000 BC Thog of Gronk, the world’s first graduate student, begins his PhD program. His department’s stipend, four pointy rocks, has not increased to this day.

  0 The birth of Jesus of Nazareth is attended by his thesis committee of three tenured wise men bearing gifts of frankincense, myrrh, and a stack of papers to grade.

  AD 18 Jesus amazes grad students everywhere by turning water into a medium-quality, well-priced microbrew.

  1849 While traveling the Oregon Trail on his way to study at Willamette Valley University, a grad student contracts dysentery and dies, despite his ability to fell a bison with a single square bullet. He is buried in a shallow grave with a small, humorous headstone.

  1923 Physicist Werner Heisenberg receives his doctorate in Munich, later discovering the Uncertainty Principle, which states that the more likely one is to understand the Uncertainty Principle, the less likely one is to get a date.

  1933 Adolf Hitler establishes work camps in which residents are forced to labor relentlessly with little reward under the false pretense that hard work will bring freedom. Jewish grad students fail to notice the change.

  1950 While earning a PhD in economics, grad student John “Russell Crowe” Nash formulates Non-Cooperative Game Theory. Friends and family question Nash’s sanity when he experiences visual delusions, harbors paranoid fantasies, and appears to enjoy grad school.

  1968 Counterculture message of the turbulent 1960s hits grad students, who pledge to fight the power by turning on, tuning in, and dropping out of their graduate programs after only a decade. Before this can happen, though, the 1970s arrive, and everyone grows creepy moustaches, making them particularly suited to remain in academia.

  1973 While in grad school, Frank Wilczek discovers the concept of asymptotic freedom, eventually earning a Nobel Prize in physics. What have you done?

  1983 Prince Adam of Eternia, attending Castle Grayskull University (Go Battle Cats!), earns his MU degree (Master’s of the Universe).

  2008 In a demonstration of the disparity between workloads in postgraduate programs, Neil Patrick Harris, having become an MD at age fourteen, completes a nineteen-year PhD in Horribleness.

  2008 Economic meltdown affects millions, instantly halving the value of 401(k) plans and plunging the stock market to record lows. Grad students are unaffected because a fraction of zero is still zero.

  2010 In a vic
tory for nerds everywhere, a publisher actually thinks a book with a Heisenberg joke is marketable.

  2020 Good evening. I’m Hugh Downs. And I’m Barbara Walters.

  2038 You graduate.

  802,701 H. G. Wells arrives in the distant future and discovers the Morlocks, a race doomed to toil fruitlessly in misery and subterranean darkness. (Insert easy joke about grad students here.)

  Tool Sample

  The Indian philosopher Baloo once spoke of the “simple bare necessities of life,” which apparently included food, water, shelter, and a half-clothed feral boy.

  As a grad student, your needs are a bit different—not so many feral boys, for example (unless you’re studying psychology, in which case you’ll need several). Everything you require to survive grad school can be found in one handy toolbox. It’s much like Batman’s utility belt, except it’s not a belt, and you, my friend, are no Batman.

  The following items are found in your Grad Student Toolbox:

  Coffee Mug

  A coffee mug is the conduit by which you convey caffeine into your blood, largely because society frowns upon drinking directly from coffeepots or injecting espresso into one’s cephalic vein. When selecting a mug, choose one that can withstand abuse. Ceramic mugs may look nice, but only a shatterproof plastic or acrylic mug will still hold coffee by the time you graduate. (To test your mug, slam it on the ground repeatedly and yell, “I can’t take it anymore!”)

  Eyeglasses

  Tacitly implying that your vision has deteriorated from long nights of studying in dimly lit spaces, eyeglasses are the first sign that you’ve willingly sacrificed health in favor of knowledge. “The ability to see is fleeting,” lenses seem to broadcast, “but love of Chaucer is forever.” (This message assumes your topic of study is Chaucer, which is only true for about half of all grad students.) Of course, not all grad students have impaired vision, but even so, you know deep down that your soul is the soul of a person who wears eyeglasses. Unfashionable ones, too.

  Watch

  In graduate school, it’s important to keep accurate time so that you have something to disregard. When you’re in the library or lab and you tell someone, “I should be done in about half an hour,” you really mean that in two hours you’ll tell them you’ll be done in fifteen minutes. In a way, this action is a microcosm of grad school itself: “Seriously. I’ll graduate in three months. And this year I mean it.”

  Hat

  For those days when basic hygiene doesn’t fit with your schedule, adding a hat to your repertoire can do a world of good. A hat calms untamed hair, casts a welcome shadow on a greasy face, and, with its handy brim, keeps people just a few inches farther away from unbrushed teeth. Call it your “I-have-not-yet-taken-a-shower cap.” Also, if you smell bad, your colleagues will just think you’re wearing a smelly hat.

  Grappling Hook

  Granted, you probably won’t need this in grad school. But HOW FRICKIN’ COOL WOULD IT BE IF YOU DID???

  Cheat Sheet

  Most grad students have the integrity not to cheat on exams. They do, however, need “cheat sheets” to tell them how to interact with other humans who aren’t in their department, a skill they often forget. Here’s a sample:

  Start with a greeting, such as “Hi,” “Hello,” or “Hey.”

  DO NOT MENTION YOUR RESEARCH!

  Inquire after your conversation partner’s health or general status.

  Try “How’s it going?” or “How’ve you been?”

  DO NOT MENTION YOUR RESEARCH!

  Even with a cheat sheet, grad students sometimes mess this up:

  NORMAL PERSON: Hi.

  GRAD STUDENT: Hello! Let k be any integer such that …

  Paper

  Remember the kind of paper you wrote on in kindergarten? The distance between the horizontal lines was wider than your arm, and there was even room for that middle dotted line. Then you graduated to regular paper and, eventually, in a transition that assured you unquestionably of your reaching adulthood, to college ruled paper. Unfortunately, there is no “grad school ruled” paper, but different disciplines do find different types of paper indispensable:

  Engineering: graph paper

  Environmental science: recycled paper

  Architecture: very big paper

  History: parchment

  Law school: Uh, I don’t know. Legal pads?

  Computer science: What’s paper?

  On the other hand, some items are very specifically not in the Grad Student Toolbox:

  Pens

  There are no pens in your toolbox—not because you don’t need them, but because you don’t need to actively obtain them. In a world where every commodity is carefully tracked and distributed, pens are the exception, floating freely in unoccupied space. You may have a pen with you right now, but if you don’t, you could certainly find one in a couple of minutes, and no one would mind if you took it. No other product is like this: You don’t drive your car, drop it off somewhere, and grab the next one you see lying around. Pens are rarely used start to finish by the same person. When was the last time you bought a pen, used it for a long time, and saw it through to the end of its ink supply? Or bought an actual replacement ballpoint cartridge? Never. Look at the pen nearest you right now. Do you even know where it came from? Is it imprinted with the logo of a company you’ve never heard of? We spend our lives drifting through an ephemeral sea of pens, using them and letting them go, like spent I overs—finding, lending, misplacing, replacing, discovering, dismantling, piling the components on our desks and playing with that little spring. If there is any evidence for creationism, it can be found in pens: They exist all around us, but no one knows from whence they came. We know only that they are good, they are here to serve us, and some people can spin them around their thumb.

  Book to Read for Pleasure

  You tell yourself you’ll have time to read for pleasure in grad school, but honestly, you won’t. (Unless it’s this book. You have time for this book. It’s literary gold.)

  Wallet

  Why carry something that’s empty?

  Grad’s Anatomy

  Whoa. This next page is like looking in a mirror, isn’t it? Yep. Just like looking in a medium-resolution gray-scale mirror with captions that makes everything the size of a trade paperback.

  Sorry to blow your mind, but this is no mirror. It’s a diagram showing the most important parts of the average grad student. Use it to identify grad students from afar or, at the very least, to engage in a very specific game of Hokey Pokey.

  Resenting Presenting

  The 2006 International Welfare Act banned torture by sleep deprivation. Unfortunately, the provision did not extend to the departmental seminar, where dozens of students are forced to watch a tedious presentation in uncomfortable chairs, heads lolling back like the tops of Pez dispensers.

  Let’s be honest. When speakers present their research, you try to pay attention. You try to follow their best attempts at obfuscation. But after about five minutes, the pretty pictures on the inside of your eyelids become quite attractive.

  Every seminar is different, in the same way that the circles of Hell are different. But they share some of the same unfortunate qualities, too. After you’ve stolen the requisite bagel, watch for the following to happen in your next departmental seminar:

  The speaker will read a wordy slide verbatim, thus defeating the purpose of a talk.

  Something won’t transfer from Mac to PC.

  The faculty member who once glared at you for falling asleep will fall asleep.

  A poor, misguided student will actually take notes.

  The projector will malfunction, and a room full of PhD’s will be unable to fix it.

  The speaker will explain abbreviations and acronyms more quickly than can be realistically remembered, leading no one in the room to marvel when he concludes, “And it turned out the answer was a combination of DMSO and PLM4!”

  A slide will include unnecessary animation,
and results will spiral or bounce into place while the speaker grins and everyone under thirty rolls their eyes.

  You will become painfully aware that it’s a beautiful day outside.

  You will doodle. It will be pretty.

  You will start writing a list of things you need to accomplish as soon as they let you out of this freaking room.

  The speaker will spend ten minutes thanking people no one in the room has heard of.

  If the speaker has a laser pointer, he will laser-point to items to which lasers needn’t point.

  The speaker will make statements clearly designed to demonstrate that he is smarter than you. He will alternate this practice with long, laborious explanations of something all attendees know already.

  Spittle will be visible.