grad school
Limbo; purgatory; a place where you waste the best years of your life apprenticing for the PhD guild.
THE BAD:
- endless homework
- potentially asshole professors
- little social life
- boring repetitive classes
- dull TA work
- shit pay
- you might end up in the middle of nowhere
- constant moving massacres relationships. Remember the girlfriend who left you because she couldn't take the long-distance relationship? Your friends? The family you see for 2 weeks per year? Better forget them... Easier that way.
- having to teach obscenely hot 18 year olds without being able to touch them
- leads to frigidity and involuntary abstinence
- it's 4am. You went to class between 9 and 12. You ate pretzels for lunch, then you graded for 4 hours. Then you wrote homework. Now your eyes are bleeding and you have the urge to cut.
- once (if) you graduate, you have to move again, in order go to post-doc, which is the same as grad school except you get a few bucks more and you write fewer pages of homework
- incipient alcoholism
THE GOOD:
- incipient alcoholism
- easy ticket to the first world for talented third worlders
- easy ticket to a big city if you luck out
- you can really slack away if you play your cards right
- 3+ months of vacation
- sort of intellectual
- beats the fucking 9 to 5. You're making 40K working 40 hours a week with 2 weeks vacation? In grad school people can make ~20K with ~10 hours of work per week and 3 months vacation. You do the math.
THE BAD:
- endless homework
- potentially asshole professors
- little social life
- boring repetitive classes
- dull TA work
- shit pay
- you might end up in the middle of nowhere
- constant moving massacres relationships. Remember the girlfriend who left you because she couldn't take the long-distance relationship? Your friends? The family you see for 2 weeks per year? Better forget them... Easier that way.
- having to teach obscenely hot 18 year olds without being able to touch them
- leads to frigidity and involuntary abstinence
- it's 4am. You went to class between 9 and 12. You ate pretzels for lunch, then you graded for 4 hours. Then you wrote homework. Now your eyes are bleeding and you have the urge to cut.
- once (if) you graduate, you have to move again, in order go to post-doc, which is the same as grad school except you get a few bucks more and you write fewer pages of homework
- incipient alcoholism
THE GOOD:
- incipient alcoholism
- easy ticket to the first world for talented third worlders
- easy ticket to a big city if you luck out
- you can really slack away if you play your cards right
- 3+ months of vacation
- sort of intellectual
- beats the fucking 9 to 5. You're making 40K working 40 hours a week with 2 weeks vacation? In grad school people can make ~20K with ~10 hours of work per week and 3 months vacation. You do the math.
I decided to go to grad school... Sure, I don't have a girlfriend... Or a car... And my friends from my old city have all but forgotten me... And I write 40 pages of homework per week... And the hot students I teach are driving me insane... And the old professor fucks are raping me at every opportunity... And I'm on a first name basis with the liquor store owner... But goddamn, at least I'm not in the 9 to 5! Yesterday, Wednesday the 12th, I slept until 1pm and then I watched 3 movies, played games for 4 hours, and drank 14 beers. Tomorrow, on Friday, I'll do the same. In a month it'll be summer again and I'll fly home to see my friends and get a nice tan... I used to think about graduation, but that was 2 years ago.
Yeah...
Yeah...
grad school by jack kane January 22, 2011
