These are my ponderings, thoughts about life in graduate school, based on Aaron Karo's Ruminations. They're fictional entertainment and not criticism so don't sue me. - rani
Ponderings #4 - a new beginning
Well I've started in a new place, a new life, a new journey sort of. It's a different city: San Francisco.
The thing about starting over is that it's like being a baby - you want to try things out for yourself but you expect to be spoonfed and have your day planned out for you. Not
to mention that you REALLY would love to sleep during the day and you keep awake most of the night. Fortunately, you don't need a diaper change.
As for this city, it's nice. You can't see most of the time because of the fog, but hey, keep in mind, it also means most everyone can't see you! This helps if you have been awake all the past night and look like the ghost of Einstein. It also explains the weird noises you hear around San
Francisco in the absence of the jam-packed roads of LA. Whereas you hear in LA: Get out of the way you stupid idiot, you're blocking the road! How am I supposed to know if you don't turn on your turn signal? In SF, you merely hear: Ouch! Sorry, didn't see you there! Watch where you're going! How can I? I can't see a thing! It's different.
San Francisco is also one of those places where people think it's cool to be cool. In LA, I remember, people were proud to wear winter coats at the slightest sign of wind. Here, everyone wears a wind-breaker regardless of the sun, rain, or fog. Not that it makes much difference anyway.
Starting in a new place is always fun. You meet new people - people say hi, where are you from? The most reasonable answer is of course, Earth. But no, you proceed to get a life story and all the latest gossip from the family until you are pretty sure you'd hate to meet Jane in Chemistry's
Uncle Bob's pet iguana. The best solution: claim you're from a nearby small town. That way, there's no information you can share about the school or city (because you lived too far away to know) and everyone knows anyway that small towns are...well...small towns.
Classes are great to go back into too. You sit down, chalk flies, and everyone is scrambling to write stuff down. Hey, it's the first year, and no one knows yet you don't need to write. For all you know, though, they could all be writing, "I wish I were somewhere else" and covering their pages with poor imitations of cartoons. But as it so happens, they are
not. Diligently, everyone writes down each word like it was the word of God. And as in every case, everyone invariably gets something wrong, until the combined notes of the class amount to that amazing thing we all call NONSENSE. If you were to take a look at the chalkboard at the end of
class, you'd agree that's an appropriate scientific term.
When it comes to finding an advisor, that term is more appropriate, but only in the sense that nothing makes sense to YOU. So you make an appointment or walk in to see a prof, and she (or he) starts. If there's anything that we as graduate students learn in graduate school, it's patience. Let them talk your ear off and yet we smile and nod and ask seemingly intelligent questions which in retrospect could have been asked by a horse. A lame horse. The descriptions we receive tell us two very important things though: 1. We know nothing about this stuff. 2. The job of the professor is to make you look and feel stupid. Okay, so maybe we are learning something after all.
I'll stop there. More next time once I've discovered the trivial value ofgrades (did I really say that?)
Life as a Graduate Student - a new beginning