The Top Ten Lies Told by Graduate Students
- It doesn't bother me at all that my college roommate is making
$80,000 a year on Wall Street.
- I'd be delighted to proofread your book/chapter/article.
- My work has a lot of practical importance.
- I would never date an undergraduate.
- Your latest article was so inspiring.
- I turned down a lot of great job offers to come here.
- I just have one more book to read and then I'll start writing.
- The department is giving me so much support.
- My job prospects look really good.
- No really, I'll be out of here in only two more years.
Top Five Lies Told by Teaching Assistants
- I'm not going to grant any extensions.
- Call me any time. I'm always available.
- It doesn't matter what I think; write what you believe.
- Think of the midterm as a diagnostic tool.
- My other section is much better prepared than you guys.
You just might be a graduate student if...
- ...you can analyze the significance of appliances you cannot operate.
- ...your office is better decorated than your apartment.
- ...you have ever, as a folklore project, attempted to track the
progress of your own joke across the Internet.
- ...are startled to meet people who neither need nor want to read.
- ...you have ever brought a scholarly article to a bar.
- ...you rate coffee shops by the availability of outlets for your
laptop.
- ...everything reminds you of something in astronomy.
- ...you have ever discussed academic matters at a sporting event.
- ...you have ever spent more than $50 on photocopying while researching
a single paper.
- ...there is a microfilm reader in the library that you consider
"yours."
- ...you actually have a preference between microfilm and microfiche.
- ...you can tell the time of day by looking at the traffic flow at
the library.
- ...you look forward to summers because you're more productive without
the distraction of classes.
- ...you regard ibuprofen as a vitamin.
- ...you consider all papers to be works in progress.
- ...professors don't really care when you turn in work anymore.
- ...you find the bibliographies of books more interesting than the
actual text.
- ...you have given up trying to keep your books organized and are now
just trying to keep them all in the same general area.
- ...you have accepted guilt as an inherent feature of relaxation.
- ...you find yourself explaining to children that you are in "20th
grade".
- ...you start refering to stories like "Snow White et al."
- ...you often wonder how long you can live on pasta without getting
scurvy.
- ...you look forward to taking some time off to do laundry
- ...you have more photocopy cards than credit cards
- ...you wonder if APA style allows you to cite talking to yourself as
"personal communication"
I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
Librarians are the secret masters of the universe. They
control information. Don't ever piss one off.
- Spider Robinson
"If you love something, write it in C; if it compiles,
it is yours; if it doesn't, it never was."
[David Mccaughan
, 11/95.]
"Well you know, C isn't that hard: void (*(*f[])())(),
for instance, declares f as an array of unspecified size, of pointers
to functions that return pointers to functions that return void... I
think."
[Sigurdur Asgeirsson , 9/95.]
Lisp, on the other hand, "has all the visual appeal
of oatmeal with fingernail clippings mixed in."
-- Larry Wall in
<1994Jul21.173737.16853@netlabs.com>. [Tom Christiansen
, 11/95.]
A. Gerstlauer, July 22, 1999