Some of my readers may be interested in what the glorious life of a graduate student is like. Many of my own students ask me:

“Dr. Cool (that’s what they call me), what’s it like being a graduate student? Do you get all the chicks? Do you sleep on a bed of twenty dollar bills? Have you ever known the pain of ignominious defeat?”

To answer their questions, aside from the last one (the answer is no), the life of a graduate student is not what everyone might think. Waking up at 8 AM every day of the week when you live literally ten minutes from campus can be frustrating at times. Fortunately, the man who invented the snooze button deserves a high five, but he probably already knows that.

Once I actually arrive on campus, life gets kinda crazy. Classes are obligatory and pretty much assumed. Six straight hours of lecture on Tuesdays and Thursdays usually causes me to zone out for a while, but we’re all in it together, and it helps to have the support of twenty five other people. The main time-consumer for courses is still homework, and we spend hours upon hours every day working on it. But we’re not there for homework, we’re there for research, and that’s when the meetings kick in.

Oh, you’d think we’re at teaching assistant meetings, drinking wine, eating cheese, and burning Benjamins to light our Cuban cigars. Oh no, this is about an hour or so discussing the horrid tedium of running through labs we long ago casually dominated and promptly forgot about. It’s a sad time, truly, but research group meetings are a different beast. We do actually drink wine and eat cheese periodically at these meetings, and then feel intimidated around the intellectual Grendels that are Physics Professors. Our only driving thought that keeps us from losing our minds or surrendering to them is the hope and prayer that we can some day become one of them.

That’s pretty much the usual day. “Weekends” are the days when we have no classes or meetings, but just a chance to catch up on homework and, on the good weekends, sleep in a bit. I hope that clears up any questions you may have.