The Graduate Student Speaketh (ranting)!

Risky to read! Risky to write!
Grad rants r repeatedly trite!

(Cough Cough)! (The throat is cleared, head isn't)! The head is a herd of unsheared sheep, that having not slept well for weeks, have started bleating together, incoherently. The cacophony, the madness has a method to it, has a pattern, an underlying invisible, but valuable message We donot know the message yet, for it is in the same language that was used in the Passion of the Christ, and the available subtitles are in Egyptian heilographics. Like in all research questions, the needful is unknown, the wanted is missing, the doable has already been done, the possible has been perfected, the impossible is known to the advisor who has forgotten to mention it to the student. Besides the student is in a persistant state of procastination, distress or undress. "Procastination is my birth right, and I shall have it." In any case, doing is less important than thinking about what to do.

Thinking produces sprains in the millions of nerve cells that need to be activated out of the blue. It gives you kind of cramps you get when you get after a dog has chased you for a mile. I have worked like a dog all my life. My life is a bitch, gets ffffed quite often. There are no puppies yet!

ffffed means getting F's you dumbo!

Miracles don't happen. Every graduate student knows it, and yet expects one. Except on the defense day, they hardly ever get lucky! Come on dude, if you ever watched the movie Saint (its better than Jackal), you would know that proven three miracles can make you a Saint. By graduating and by getting a REAL job some of us get two miracles to occur. If you don't believe me, read PhD comics!

There are no flashes of brilliance. Sometimes there are no flashes, no light, no brillance. Some tunnels do not open to a bright sky. Anyone who ever told you you are smart never went to graduate school, and if he did, and still said that he just sympathized with you! We live with limitations, and hence we are not stupid. Whoever said "Genius has his limitation, stupidity is not this handicapped." was talking about us!

I believe in myself. I believein myself. I belie vain myself:)!

Cribbing helps. It brings back the focus to problem at hand: You! It motivates to graduate sooner. It presents a pathway of self-realization, which is underhanded way of say it helps you to stay conceited and happy. It makes your problem Somebody Else's Problem (refer to Douglas Adams for details)! Most importantly it cleanses your system of the remorse of not having accomplished anything. Not accomplishing anything is not uncommon, rather a success must always be treated with suspicion. A success is like a dream that a graduate student cannot have. A success is like a pay check that a graduate student knows nothing about. A success is a myth.

We are the drivers of myths, the movers of miracles, the believers in slackers, the seekers of not easily disproved. We are the hungry, we survive only beause there is a constant influx of free food from seminars. We are the grumbling, grunting gas bags of unfulfilled desires, and misplaced needs. We solve Differential Equations for food.

There are few things that keep us going, save our day. The coffee, the tea, the tablespoons of sugar, the crumbs of cookies, the leftovers from yesterday's seminars. If there is advisor, there is lo behold, Budweiser. There are deadlines; you have to stop working after they are over. And there is Google. Google knows everything. Google is god. What can be done, can be found on google. What cannot be done can be found on Google. Google is the best thing that ever happened to graduatestudentkind. Next time you google this long word, you will figure that it exists, and can be found on my homepage.

Being a graduate student is not all that bad for following debatable reasons:

Being graduate student makes you patient (good for guys as it helps them bear with their girlfriends)!

It makes you mentally tougher (you know SHIT HAPPENS, and you know how to deal with it)

It makes you humble and grumble (and you definitely learn how to mumble in a way that people associate with deep thinking of a doctorate holder)!

It makes you grow older and wiser and cynical and less hairy on the top and makes you miserly, capable of surviving on almost nothing (to eat and wear). (Leads to long term happiness as you have seen the worse already!)!

It makes people respect you, and they give huge allowance for your lack of dressing sense, lack of table manners, pot bellies, poorly shaved beards, forgetfulness and HUGE APETITE when invited for dinners.

It teaches you practical things like "how to stand on shoulder of giants" like Einstein did, how to write hundred pages without stating anything new and yet making it sound revolutionary, the skills of cooking and cleaning and the importance of being trivial in realm of how the world is and yet being hailed as experts (of a very narrow field, with only 3-4 people besides you knowing how less you really know).

Lastly, it gives you time, energy, motivation and ability to read and write such blogs:)!

PS: All advisors and graduate students mentioned here are imaginary, and all that is said here is quite unrelated to the happy life of this graduate student: unlike his future thesis, this is a work of fiction!