graduate student 

A young adult whose number one motivating factor is free food.

Marissa, a graduate student, just attended a pointless workshop on conflict resolution just because there was free pizza there.

graduate student by Carla Cat October 29, 2013

graduate student 

One who chooses to add to the breadth of their education by embarking upon a program that may award him/her a master's degree, a Ph.D, or no degree at all. While this decision may, under very particular circumstances, lead to a position as a tenured professor in a university, it will most likely lead to a decade or more of delaying the individual's entry to what most people would call the "real" world. Becoming a graduate student allows one to enter the self-perpetuating institution of academia.

Ex. 1
Typical sign in a physical sciences laboratory: "Do not feed graduate students and other lab animals."

Ex. 2
Grad student: "I'm writing a thesis on the remnants of Victorian culture in modern stereotypes of Transylvania."

Friend: "What are you going to use that for?"

Grad student: "I hope to become an English professor because if I'm lucky, I may one day out-earn high school teachers."

graduate student by academicbubble January 7, 2012

Graduate student syndrome 

Graduate student syndrome includes those who've never held a job, their parents paid for their education, think that they know better than you outside of their discipline, can never be wrong, can't admit when they are wrong, and are insecure.

Jesse attempted to school his landlord with respect to property management law. He got his ass handed to him. He thinks that he knows everything and is never wrong. I think he's suffering from graduate student syndrome.

Graduate student syndrome by kilday April 7, 2019