Surviving Your Stupid, Stupid Decision to Go to Grad School Read online

  If you answered “a” or “b” to most questions, relax! Enjoy yourself! You have a rich and rewarding life ahead of you, no part of which should be spent in academia. Go directly to the frat house.

  If you answered “c” to most questions, fuck. You’re perfect for grad school. Say goodbye to your social life, your finances, and any friends who don’t study the same subject.

  Grad Libs

  When you’re a kid, Mad Libs are silly. You bought a duck in Florida and carried it greasily? Ha ha ha! Children are easily amused because children are dumb.

  Then you graduate to the adolescent world of Mad Libs, in which you make every filled-in blank a dirty word, regardless of whether a dirty word exists for that part of speech. For example, you might write that you bought a wiener in Butt Land and carried it boobily. You learn soon enough that the list of smutty adverbs is a mighty short list, and there’s only one filthy conjunction: but.

  Now you’re too old for Mad Libs. You’ve matured. You’ve moved on.

  It’s time for Grad Libs.

  Blockin’ Out the Scenery, Breakin’ My Mind

  Still not sure if you should go to grad school? Look for the top ten signs that you belong in an institution (pause) of higher learning:

  10. You have friends who got high-paying jobs doing something easy right out of college … and for some reason, you don’t envy them.

  9. You could talk for hours about the awesome features in the new versions of EndNote or RefWorks.

  8. No one depends on you financially.

  7. In college, your favorite classes were the most fascinating ones, not the easiest ones. And you did all the “optional” reading—and loved it.

  6. You find yourself describing academic texts using the same terms other people use to describe extreme sports. (“That gnarly textbook chapter by Hoffman et al. is such an adrenaline rush that it rocks the fucking universe!”)

  5. You think the job market will improve in a generation or so, right when you’ll be ready to join it.

  4. You feel a deep love for a particular citation style and genuine contempt for all other citation styles.

  3. It’s been too long since you had a good bout of nervous diarrhea.

  2. To you, “semiformal” attire means wearing a T-shirt that wasn’t free.

  And the number one sign you should go to grad school:

  1. Despite all you’ve just learned, you still freaking want to. That’s the only sign you’ll heed, anyway.

  Making Cents

  Before committing to your program, ask yourself two basic questions: Can you afford to go to grad school? And if you can’t, will that stop you?

  Write the annual amounts you’re likely to receive from the following sources on the blank lines. Add them. If the final total is less than the cost of your graduate program, but you still want to enroll, consider sleeping with a lonely financial aid officer.

  Departmental Aid

  In some programs, your department may actually give you an annual stipend or fellowship. To calculate the amount they’re likely to offer, look up the average cost of living in your area and divide by a thousand while cackling maniacally.

  ______

  Research Assistantship

  If you take an RA position, you’ll perform cutting-edge studies using state-of-the-art equipment and get your name in prestigious publications, giving you a leg up for the rest of your career. Just kidding. You’ll wash glassware.

  ______

  Teaching Assistantship

  When you’re in college, the TAs seem like aliens—a species of students slightly too old to be your friends, who probably live in the academic building where they proctor your exams. This is only mostly true. Also, the moment you become a TA yourself, you’ll realize exactly why you, as an undergrad, were so annoying.

  ______

  Outside Fellowship

  If you’re ever worried that history will forget the details of your life, holy crap, get a fellowship named after you. These have names like “The Mortimer H. L. Nussenzweig, PhD Class of 1951 Doctoral Fellowship for the Playing of the Zither,” and are as difficult to land as they are to fit into one line on your résumé.

  ______

  On-Campus Job

  Yeah. Awesome idea. You don’t spend enough time on campus as it is. Now you have to spend twenty hours a week working in the library’s Special Collections Room or fielding calls from confused tenured professors at the Computer Help Desk. “Well,” you think, “at least it pays better than waiting tables.” But it doesn’t.

  ______

  Off-Campus Job

  Something probably makes you feel good about being the smartest waitress at Applebee’s—briefly, anyway. You can spend all day thinking about the master of fine arts degree you’re getting at night while you serve high-school kids who order the cheapest items on the menu. You pity your co-workers who’ll still be bussing tables three years from now, but then you realize you’ll still be bussing tables three years from now as well—and you’ll have a giant debt.

  ______

  Your Parents

  During college, your parents were so proud of everything their brilliant little scholar accomplished. But ask them to support you financially during grad school, and watch how fast they backpedal on their commitment to education: “Well … that seventeen-year PhD program sure looks nice, but don’t you want to … I don’t know, get a job now?”

  ______

  Student Loan

  Thirty years from now, when you look at your hard-earned diploma, you’ll reminisce about the good times you spent studying the subject you love. Then you’ll sigh, dig out your checkbook, and make another monthly payment.

  ______

  Sallie Mae

  This is the name of your great-aunt on your mother’s side. She is wealthy. Kill her and take the money.

  ______

  Um … You Know … Someplace

  Most students plan to fund their graduate education by acquiring a large sum of money from um … you know … someplace. Don’t listen to the dissidents who tell you this plan won’t work. It must, because you’ve already made several decisions that require it to have worked.

  ______

  TOTAL:_________

  2

  Selecting a Graduate Program

  WHERE, WHEN, HOW, AND WHY, GOD, WHY?

  SO YOU’VE decided to go to grad school. That’s … great. Really tremendous. Hooray you.

  But which school should you choose? How will you get in? And what’s that vague, plaintive wail? Oh, never mind. It’s just your soul.

  Quiet, soul! Let’s take a look at the factors (besides gullibility) that will inform your choice of graduate program.

  Agin’ Fetish

  Unlike high school, where a middle-age student would get (a) funny looks and (b) arrested, graduate schools welcome students of all ages. (They say you’re never too old to learn, but that’s probably because they’ve never seen my grandparents try to use the Internet.)

  The age at which you opt to begin graduate study says a lot about you as a person. It invites judgment about the choices you’ve made—or, rather, about whether you’re old enough to know better than to make one particularly unfortunate choice. Here are the messages you project when you enter grad school at different ages:

  21–25: You are a serious student who thinks time between college and grad school is time wasted. Though you may have a few lingering traces of party instinct, the real world will soon kill those. (Seven-dollar beers seem a bit less attractive when you’re paying your gas bill.)

  26–35: You’ve taken a few years after college to find yourself, work at a well-paying job, or join the Peace Corps, and now it’s time to get serious. You always knew you’d come back to grad school, and now here you are, with a little perspective to boot. Hopefully you saved some money.

  36–49: At some point in the prime of your life, you realized you wanted a change of career. Doing the math, you discovered you had j
ust enough time left to get this degree, pursue your dreams, and live those dreams for a good decade or so before retirement. Of all age groups, you are the most passionate about learning and don’t care whether the younger students think you’re a suck-up—which you are. But screw them. This is your time.

  ≥50: You are unrealistic. You will die before you get to do anything useful with this degree. You are throwing away everything you’ve worked for. Your family thinks you’re off your nut. You really don’t understand the way the world works. You are a ninja.

  The Elegant University

  If you could go anywhere you wanted, which grad school would you attend?

  Oh. If you could go anywhere you wanted, you wouldn’t go to grad school. Very clever. But suppose you’ve decided to go to grad school. What type of school is right for you?

  Small Liberal Arts College

  If you like a big piece of tofu on a bed of tempeh and seitan, if you have a pierced tattoo, or if your thick glasses evoke “indie bassist” rather than “1972 NASA Mission Control,” you may find a home among the fair-trade coffee shops and lesbian political rallies of a small liberal arts college. (Here, liberal refers to most professors’ political affiliation, and small refers to their ambition.)

  Ag School

  An institution where classroom size is measured in acres, students chew sorghum, and even the cows have their own mascot (“Hubert the Human”), an ag school makes sense for graduate study only if, say, you want a PhD in dairy science. But if you want a PhD in dairy science … why? Are you trying to be King of the Farmers?

  Freeze-Your-Ass-Off College

  Isn’t upstate New York beautiful in the spring? And Wisconsin. Isn’t Wisconsin beautiful in the spring? Yeah. That’s why they show you these schools in the spring. Remember, if a school has a charming series of tunnels connecting its academic buildings, it’s because the great outdoors is absolutely glacial eight months a year.

  Ivy League University

  Do you enjoy dining on white linen tablecloths, ordering servants to polish the silver, and having your every whim catered to? That’s not important. The real question is, do you enjoy watching undergrads dine on white linen tablecloths, order servants to polish the silver, and have their every whim catered to? Your sole function at these schools is to provide the undergrads with something to bitch about. (“I can’t understand my TA’s accent because he’s from the middle class!”) Should you enroll at an Ivy League grad school, look forward to interacting with highly intelligent, highly whiny students, all of whom have trust funds set up to pay the legal fees incurred when they sue your ass for giving them a B+.

  School Outside the United States

  It’s bold to commit oneself to several years in a strange country with a strange language and customs, such as Finland or Texas. But graduate study abroad is perfect for the show-off student who feels that since Applied Mathematics isn’t difficult enough—hell, let’s do it in Mandarin. Should you choose to go international, you’ll quickly find yourself the lone token defender of America’s foreign policy—even if you hate America’s foreign policy—not to mention the only student bored by constant discussion of soccer. On the upside, every other nation has better beer.

  Party School

  Be forewarned that the word party does not apply to you. Party is the term for the horrible, drunken brawl in the next apartment that interrupts you during a late-night study session. Party is the excuse your students will give you for missing class. Party is a culture you may have once loved but will quickly grow to despise. Over the course of your graduate studies, party will age you fifty years. You’ll scarcely notice that you’ve suddenly become an elderly crank, banging on your apartment wall, berating “those damn fool kids,” wishing that one of them, just one, might hook up with you.

  Low-Cost-of-Living School

  There is one way to survive grad school without impoverishing yourself, but it’s not pretty: Find a college whose two-story academic buildings are the tallest structures in town. Make sure it’s surrounded by wheat fields, industrial waste, and/or bands of migrant timberwolves. And a Wal-Mart. Then pat yourself on the back as you smugly pay your twenty-dollar monthly rent, because wow. You’re saving so much money. (Yeah. You’re saving it for plane tickets to get as far the hell away as often as possible.)

  Distance Learning Academy

  Want an advanced degree without the drudgery of human interaction, scholarly discussion, or personal enrichment? Now you can “attend” grad school by simply posting grammatically unfortunate comments on message boards! Distance learning—so called because it allows you to “distance” yourself from “learning”—lets you attend class while checking your email, updating your Facebook status, or surfing for YouTube videos of funny kittens. Now that’s a degree to be proud of.

  Safety School

  A safety school is a school you know you’ll get into, you convince yourself you’d gladly attend, and then, when it’s the only school that admits you, one about which you bitch and moan because you really aren’t content there. While there, you’ll feel compelled to ensure that all the other grad students know it’s your safety school. This will make them love you.

  In Quad We Trust

  Once you decide which grad school to attend, visit the campus. Maybe even take a campus tour so that you can hear the undergraduate tour guides tell the same apocryphal stories you hear at every school (“The library is sinking because when the architect designed it, he forgot to take into account the weight of the books!”).

  Check out, then take a look around your campus. Learn the names of the buildings. Harass a squirrel or two.

  And get comfortable, bitch, because you’re gonna be here a long time.

  Not Overly Invested

  Smart financial planners recommend sound investment strategies, consultation with professionals, and lucrative interest-bearing accounts. Then again, smart financial planners have lots of money. You, not so much.

  But with the few assets you have, it’s still a good idea to diversify. Let’s take a look at a grad student’s well-balanced portfolio:

  Checking Account $10.71

  Savings Account $40.00

  Inadvertent Savings Account (between couch cushions) $1.27

  Collateral (value of couch) $1.08

  Partially Full Photocopy Card $2.10

  Unused Postage Stamp $0.44

  Unrealized Beer Bottle Deposits $0.15

  Anticipated Birthday Gift (just ten months to go!) $25.00

  Significant Mutual Fund Holdings Just kidding

  Lost Cash Probably Buried Under Proust and Narrative Allegory, Vol. 6, in Library Carrel (and when you find it, you’ll use it to top off the photocopy card) $5.00

  Value of Wine Collection (i.e., the bottle of Charles Shaw you bought at Trader Joe’s) $2.99

  Current Total Value of All Nearby Take-a-Penny-Leave-a-Penny Trays $0.73

  Outstanding Debt AAAAAAAH! DON’T LOOK! DON’T LOOK!

  Admission Accomplished: Selecting the Least Egregious Recommendation Letter

  Because grades, GRE scores, and application essays are all poor predictors of academic ability, grad school admissions committees demand something a bit more reliable: a hastily written recommendation from someone you handpicked to praise you.

  Most schools will want to see an unreasonable number of these, such as three. Which do you choose? Whose say-so is sufficient to convince the committee? (And why in God’s name did you wait until two days before the letters were due?)

  Let’s move down the hierarchy:

  Professor Who Knows You Well and Likes You

  This is the holy grail of recommendation letters. You may even know such a professor—but do you know three? Probably not.

  Professor Who Knows You Well but Doesn’t Like You

  Risky. Some professors who don’t like you can be diplomatic and at least make vague or neutral statements such as “He certainly gets things done,” or “She is a student.” B
ut others will refuse to write a reference letter, or, worse, will write only negative sentiments. If this happens, call your admissions committee and tell them you accidentally told this professor it was Opposite Day.

  Professor Who Doesn’t Know You

  In a lecture course of five hundred students, you ended up somewhere in the upper third. You are automatically entitled to ask the professor for a recommendation letter, which will probably look something like this:

  I’ve known this student for five minutes, and she’s the best student I met during those five minutes. She scored above average in my class. She gave me a copy of her résumé to help me write this letter. It looks okay. I’m attaching it.

  Really Famous and Distinguished Person Who Doesn’t Know You

  So your dad once shared an elevator with the prime minister of Singapore, and he wants the guy to write you a recommendation. Unfortunately, admissions committees aren’t as dumb as you’d think, and they can tell when you’re celebrity-baiting—not that this realization will necessarily stop them from admitting you.