Today during coffee group we had a funny/sad conversation about how our social skills seem to be deteriorating the longer we are in grad school. This got me thinking - how we are in this predicament of grad school and have these experiences that if experienced alone would be awful, but since we're all going through it together (I'm not the only one who uses 'positive feedback' in normal conversation), we might as well laugh at ourselves. I thought I'd modify it to fit my life.
You might be a grad student if ...
1. you have ever brought a scholarly article on a long bike ride
2. you rate coffee shops by the availability of outlets for your laptop and how much they charge for refills
3. you have ever discussed academic matters while snowshoeing
4. you wonder if APA style allows you to cite talking to yourself as "personal communication."
5. you have two coffee makers, phone charger, microwave, blanket, enough food for a few meals, and sofa in your office
6. you procrastinate on one project by working on another project.
7. you are working on one thing but feeling guilty that you aren't working on the other thing.
8. Your husband forgets that he's married but wonders where all the peanut butter has gone.
9. people (non-grad students) ask you "Are you going to be done soon?" and you laugh but inside a little part of you dies.
10. you've spent multiple nights in your office
11. sleeping in means sleeping until 8:00
12. you consider luna bar + latte a proper lunch/dinner
13. you've slept with your laptop at your bedside, and checked your program as soon as you wake up.
14. everything reminds you of something in your discipline.
15. you look forward to summers because you're more productive without the distraction of classes.
16. you have accepted guilt as an inherent feature of relaxation.
17. you reflexively start analyzing those greek letters before you realize that it's a sorority sweatshirt, not an equation.
18. you consider caffeine to be a major food group.
19. you've worked on your thesis in the few hours between eating breakfast and racing in a triathlon
20. Saturday nights spent studying no longer seem weird.
21. you find yourself citing sources in conversation.
22. you ask for the IPCC report for your Christmas gift from your husband, and are really disappointed when you don't get it
Yes - I affirm that these are all true. If you read this and can think of others, let me know, and we can laugh at each other. (By the way, a lot of these I 'borrowed from this facebook group: Grad Students: they're Not Bad People, they Just Made Terrible Life Choices).
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