Well, what the hell. I’m looking for an excuse to procrastinate.
Just in case these things might be of any interest to anyone–I’m recovering from damage to the nerve that controls your sense of balance in my right ear, and I just had my landlady evict my roommate.
Feel free to ask me questions on any subject. Any at all.
No guarantee I’ll give you a prompt response, but I’ll do my best.
–Scribble.
Why is the sky blue?
Because it reflects the sea, of course.
What are you studying? Is the GMAT hard? Why did you go to graduate school? Should I have gone? I’d like to be more educated, but since I’m not in academia, I didn’t think an advanced degree in English and/or political science would do me a bit of good (those are my undergrad majors). Do you eat balanced meals? Who does your laundry?
Ooh, can I play? I’m an exhausted procrastinating grad student too…
WesTheMess: I don’t know about the sky, but here is what happened to violets:
Love on a day, wise poets tell,
Some time in wrangling spent,
Whether the violets should excel
Or she, in sweetest scent.
But Venus having lost the day,
Poor girls, she fell on you :
And beat ye so, as some dare say,
Her blows did make ye blue.
– Robert Herrick
Ellen:
English. I don’t know (I only took the GRE). They paid me. No. Yes, as long as one recognizes that the major food groups are garlic, pasta, and beer. What’s laundry?
Who makes the best pizza?
As yet another tired GTA-
somebody else
How do you really feel about the students in the classes you TA? Are we fun to talk to, or annoying pests who don’t turn our homework in on time (sorry about that)?
Another tired grad student here. I’d ask you something, but I don’t have the energy or a coherent thought in my head to spare.
I guess I could ask if you’re unionized, and whether your union favors melodramatic freedom-fighter language like ours does. It’s embarrassing. We’re graduate students, for god’s sakes, not peasants running for our lives from an oppressive paramilitary dictatorship.
Duh! I meant GRE. :o Thanks for answering, Fret!
How do “real” grad students feel about professional school students (medicine,law, business)?
As a law student, I know that I try to avoid identifying myself as a “grad student.” (“So, you’re a grad student.” “Well, kind of. I’m in law school.”)
I guess I view it as a training vs. learning sort of thing.
Of course, most likely you don’t think of us at all. 
Well now, that all depends…
[ul]
Some are fun to talk to (I still occasionally talk to people I had in class three years ago).
Some are mostly frustrating. (“Oh, well, I didn’t really feel like coming to class for the last month, and I haven’t done any homework, but I need an A, so would you mind going over everything I was supposed to have learned in the past month?”)
Most of them are just regular people.
And a really tiny minority are oh-so-interesting. (“I’d do ANYTHING (wink wink nudge nudge please check out my cleavage) for an A, except actually doing the work or coming to class.”)
[/ul]
Oh, and Cranky, we’re technically unionized, and the union is constantly fighting the opressive academic-industrial complex, but most of us just ignore them.
(added in preview) No, sorry, don’t think of professional school students. I suppose I classify them as grad students in a dim sort of “well, they’re not undergrads and they don’t have advanced degrees yet” kind of way, but… And of course, in both cases, there’s both training and learning going on, just in differing degrees. But basically, I almost always forget they even exist. Sorry.
Whew! Obviously, I’m not tired enough, or else I wouldn’t be answering these…
Another one here. What are we all studying? (art history here) Is anyone secretly wishing he/she had studied something totally different but has too much invested to bail out? Are all the humanities students amazed/depressed realizing how many foreign languages they now have a reading knowledge of? Are we all having anxiety nightmares about giving exams instead of about taking exams, now?
Adriane-- I had a sad epiphany the other day-- no matter how hard I try to be amusing and interesting and down-to-earth with my discussion sections, only 3 or 4 out of 20 will ever ever ever find this entry level course interesting. The 3 or 4 kids who are interested and politely laugh at my self-deprecating humour and occasional curse word would all be very easy to keep interested and amuse, anyway, with much less effort on my part (as I recall what my classes were always like when I was an undergrad this seems inevitable), but the rest will just want to get it over with and get their 4 credits of whatever, and so I need to give up on being greatly liked by everyone (as it is not possible) and get the damn info across, in a dry manner if necessary. But the students who do care and, um, discuss in discussion section (i.e. the students who I feel I have communicated with at all) make me feel great. We want you guys to come to our office hours because we have lost touch with what school was like and need to be reminded that your values/ priorities are not identical to ours (except beer, of course) and we like talking to people.
There’s nothing like having someone mention that they are changing majors to your department because your class was so interesting. Thank your TAs every now and then-- one nice remark each week makes the 60 angry or annoying comments all disappear.
And for some reason my union hooked up with the AFL-CIO instead of the AFT, a fact which endlessly annoys and confuses me.
Oh, Christ. Sorry, Ariadne about the mangling of your handle. Sleeeepy.
another grad student here…
but i’ve been able to rest up these days and recover some from my burnout. i thought about taking a semester off, but i am almost finished. there are other things i’m interested in… linguistics, ethnomusicology, other languages, psychology… but i get tired of school quickly these days. i think i would take a break and do real world things again for a while before and if i do decide to go to school again. (or maybe i could try a more balanced approach next time so i don’t feel like life is on hold!) this is my ‘practical degree’ (teaching esl) that will give me some more freedom. i’m glad to be getting a change of scenery soon.
as for other students… i don’t know that i think of professional school students differently than regular grad students. i think of us all as perhaps masochistic people with caffeine addictions!
(and art history is cool!)
How do I feel about my students? Nice kids, for the most part, but I’m constantly amazed at how much they don’t know. (Academically, not socially – everybody is clueless about people at eighteen, but students coming out of the NC educational system seem to be a couple of years behind where we were when I graduated from high school in another state.) Anyway, most of them seem quite bright in everyday matters and they’re great to have in the classroom, but I’ve started to cringe every time I see another stack of papers.
Are we unionized? Yes, in a sense, but since collective bargaining is illegal for state employees here, the union can’t do much. I’m a proud member, regardless, as I see it as one of the few campus organizations pushing for some badly needed changes. (And no, I have never heard any rhetoric about the oppressive academic-industrial complex.)
Professional students? Hmm, the only one I’ve ever met was a business student named Mark, who hooked up with me at a club, said he’d call and never did, and then e-mailed me asking for a date eighteen months later. I didn’t think very highly of him, but I am reluctant to generalize.
Secretly wishing I’d studied something different? No, but I kind of wish I’d had the guts to move to Europe after college, and I’m still toying with the idea of taking a year off and teaching English in the Czech Republic or Poland (but in my heart I know it would probably be a permanent move, and I’m not sure it’s what I want).
Anxious about all the foreign languages I have reading knowledge of? Nah, more anxious about the ones I’m supposed to and don’t.
Nightmares about giving exams instead of taking them? Nope. We don’t give exams in freshman comp classes anyway, and the prospect of my own PhD quals is much, much scarier than anything I’ve faced on the other side of the desk.
When are you going to finish?
:d&r:
Another grad student checking in. I’m studying applied geography, trying to do something in historic preservation planning. I’m sorta atypical in that I’m an old geezer with a wife and 2 kids, trying to get the master’s I should have gotten before I got married. I don’t TA, I work as an intern at a federal agency part-time, and go to school full-time. It sucks, but it’s only for another 2 years.
Hey, I wanna play, too! Grad student studying public history, with a concentration in museum studies. I don’t TA, but I am a research assistant, which brings its own special set of aggravations (i.e., working for obnoxious professors instead of with obnoxious undergrads). I love what I’m studying, but since I just got a job in my field (I’m the education coordinator at a small museum), I’m finding it really hard to get motivated to finish up school. Of course, they cut off my financial aid if I don’t finish in time, so that’s a pretty decent incentive right there.
A little question for you TA’s…
Can you tell when one of your college students have a crush on you? (And with this I am assuming that said students are not doing wink wink, nudge nudge, how you doin’? stuff)