"Listicle"? Seriously?

Greetings from a flat Earth!

I mean, it must be flat, since I seemed to have fallen off the edge of it and gotten lost for a while...  I realized this morning that apparently I haven't posted anything since October.  Well.  I guess the only thing to do is just pick up where I left off as though nothing happened.

Maybe instead of composing some lengthy post that's deep and meaningful (because I've written oh so many of those), I'll ease myself back in with something short, sweet, and amusing.  Since it seems so many other bloggers have jumped on the digital bandwagon, I think I'll try my hand at a list-type article (or "listicle", as I've been informed they're called).  Here goes nothin'...

12 Things Every Student Learns Their First Year of Grad School

(Don't worry, I won't go all Buzzfeed on you. I don't have that much time to search out relevant GIFs)

1. Everybody in your cohort has a different specialty.  Everyone is coming from a host of different backgrounds, and that makes for a diverse class.  The first thing is to recognize that something that is elementary for you may as well be nuclear fission to the person sitting next to you (and vice-versa).  Once that gap is bridged, you can really start to take advantage of others' perspectives.  It makes for great discussion sections where you actually learn things!

2. No one has a clue what they're doing with their lives.  Sure, you might know generally what you're interested in researching, but guaranteed most (if not all) members of your cohort, and your program in general, won't have any concrete plans for what comes next.  What do I want to do after I graduate?  I don't know, I'm still in school because I don't want to have to deal with the real world!

3. "Free time" is a fairy tale grad students tell one another to keep themselves sane.  Most of your waking hours are spent either in class or studying, and then there's your actual research.  For science grad students (and life sciences especially), your experiments really could not care less about your timeline.  Weekends?  Forget it, you've got plants to water and prune.  Week-long holidays?  That's cute.  If you were gone for a week, your colonies would look like a post-apocalyptic wasteland by the time you got back.  And when once you had a whole multitude of hobbies to occupy your interests, now you have only "getting a full night's sleep for once".

4. Your criticisms of your instructors' teaching (ability/style/etc.) changes.  As an undergrad, "I hate how boring this instructor is!", "Can't he just use PowerPoint & put it all up online so I don't have to go to class?", and "I really wish she would just give us credit for turning in the homework, whether we got the right answer or not." were all valid and oft-recited complaints. Once you get to grad school, you more often find yourself making remarks like, "I wish we had more information so we could understand the underlying concepts!" or, "When I'm a professor there's no way I'll administer multiple choice tests- they don't prove you know anything!"  Although getting credit just for turning in an assignment would still be nice.

5. "Eating healthy" is a joke.  Having time to eat at all (as well as having the few dollars to buy food with) is a luxury.  So you're not going to be picky whether it's a greasy burger that looks like somebody sat on it or a locally-sourced organic salad.  As long as it's cheap and I can eat it in 5 minutes as I run from class to a lab meeting, I really couldn't care less.

6. Procrastination becomes an art form.  You thought you were good at procrastinating before.  But oh man, if you were a Master level procrastinator by the time you got your Bachelor's degree, you're a freaking Epic level procrastinator now (armed with a bevy of gaming and social media apps that add at least +10 to your overall Procrastination proficiency score).  You'll even clean your apartment to avoid doing what actually needs to be done.  Talk about desperate!

7. You drink far more frequently (though perhaps in less volume) than ever before.  Whether you're celebrating a manuscript being accepted for publication or drowning your sorrows that your year-long data gathering has given you no meaningful results whatsoever, there's always an occasion to drink.  I just hate Tuesdays... anyone wanna go out for a beer?

8. No matter what you learned in elementary school, there really is such a thing as a stupid question.  And everyone will ask one from time to time.  Just as long as you can ask other people in the class and come to a satisfactory conclusion the instructor never has to know, and that can save you a world of embarrassment.

9. Study groups will save your life, and your GPA.  Seriously.  Never underestimate the teaching power of fairly intelligent people working collaboratively in a small group.  I've learned more from brainstorming and debating concepts with a handful of my peers than I have from any lecture or professor's office hours.  The division of labor when tackling study guides is great, too.

10. Your daily life actually does start to resemble PHD comics.  Even if they seem outrageous at first glance, there's a reason why Piled Higher & Deeper (PHD) has such an avid student following.  It falls into the center of one of those priceless combinations of sad-but-true and funny-because-it's-true venn diagrams that makes you laugh because you can relate to it perfectly, all the while crying a little on the inside because you can relate to it so perfectly. (This one pretty much sums up how I'm feeling this week)

11. Bonding with your cohort is a real thing that actually happens.  I think it must be the "misery loves company" philosophy put into practice.  I don't care how antisocial you are (case in point: me), the group of you are all suffering through the same trials and tribulations together, and that's enough for anyone to bond over.  They're the only ones who can understand exactly what you're going through at the moment, and be there to support you through it (just like you did for them last week).  And if all else fails, see #7.

12. You will never feel like you've learned enough.  I spent several hours this past weekend working out a schedule of classes I need to take in order to graduate, since we have to submit our formal course plan to the Graduate Division by the end of next quarter.  You know what I discovered?  I have to take one more class after this year to have enough units to graduate.  That's right: one.  Didn't I just start grad school? (Answer: yes)  How could I have possibly learned enough to be walking away with a Master's degree already?!  Doesn't the administration know how stupid I still am??  Truth is, I doubt anyone ever feels prepared to graduate, especially in a research field.  Even though I'll be continuing on to get my PhD somewhere else (and, with any luck, a postdoc or two after that) before actually going out into the world, I still feel incredibly unprepared.

So, there we have it.  My caving in to write something "trendy" that will hopefully give people in the same situation as me a chuckle, or at least a sad shake of the head because they know everything I've just said is true.  I think I've procrastinated enough now; I'm off to grab a burger and stay up all night cramming for tomorrow's midterm.