10 Truths about grad school

As most of you already know I am a graduate student in the field of library and information science. The sad truth of grad school today is that everyone and their brother is going. Partly to avoid the bad job market, but also because a bachelor's degree has almost become the equivalent of a high school diploma.

Sadly, this is how some people end up in grad school.

I graduated last May from a state school with a Bachelor of Arts in History. (Although, my degree doesn't even list my major. It just says "Bachelor of Arts." So if I get Alzheimer's, I won't even be able to look at that to remind myself what I went to college for! "Why yes I went to college, but my degree has made me conveniently forget what for! All well!") And yes, I knew going into my major that I would be unable to do anything with my degree unless I sought even higher education. Honestly, my choices were 1. go to grad school 2. become a bum and scream at people that I went to college so I deserve their respect. I decided to go to grad school.

Now my program is unique. It is advertised as being a two year program, but in reality, they push you through in eleven months of trial by fire. When I pointed this out to my professors, they looked at my like I was crazy. "Well of course it's two years," one of them said to me with a smile. "You start one year and you finish the next year. Two years."

-_- No bitch. Two years is four semesters with a summer break in between. But evidently my iSchool (that is what a certified MLIS school is called, short for "Information School"), does not use logic. But I am actually very happy about being able to finish my degree in eleven months. I will get out into the job market quicker AND I will not spend as much money.

While here though, I have learned some ultimate truths about grad school. So let me teach them to you, especially if you are thinking of taking this crazy ride.

1. You will age.
   No one ever believes me on this one. And those people are usually the ones who get to know you DURING your time in graduate school. Unfortunately, this is one of the worst truths of grad school. You can kiss your youth good-bye if you are a traditional student who has gone with no or very little time between your undergraduate and graduate time. The amount of stress that one is dealing with is almost unimaginable, especially during the first semester. For those of us who start our graduate programs in the fall, most of us will say the same thing. The first month, September, is terrible. October is make or break and November... well you're pretty much screwed. When your first semester is over, you will not see many waking hours. Most of your time off in between semesters will be spent sleeping. Unless you decide to take advantage of the winter "mini-semester" if your program offers one. (If you do you should probably be admitted to the asylum.)

When I came home from my first semester, before I walked in the door, my parents were under the impression that I was going to go back to my job at the grocery store down the street. But when I walked in the door, my mother was shocked at how terrible I looked and my dad actually said to my face "Wow you look like crap. Did you age by five years or something?" My mother patted my shoulder and told me to spend the next two weeks doing whatever I wanted. I spent the next two weeks sleeping as much as possible and playing video games while crying in the mirror about my appearance. I have really aged. I don't even get carded anymore.

My boyfriend started grad school with a lot more hair. He finished grad school in December with a highly noticeable receding hairline. People have told him that he looks like he is at least forty. He turned twenty-four in November...

Still don't believe me? Believe it.

2. You will be hungry.

  Now while I do have a job that pays, the university finds every way possible to screw over its student workers. Pay cycles are once a month. Now I have been lucky that I have a partial scholarship, so I get back about half of my loan money that goes into a savings account for my third semester. But I try as hard as possible not to touch it. Unfortunately, the fact of the matter is that I have not been given a full paycheck since I started back this semester. The way that the pay cycle is here makes it next to impossible to be paid regularly, a full paycheck, every month.

So in the meantime, you are left wondering how you are going to afford to feed yourself. You find yourself constantly haunting the halls, looking for receptions that have leftovers so that you can descend like a common rat, stuff yourself and your school bag, and then run off like a thief in the night. If you ever see a grad student with a guilty look and a packed school bag that they are cradling like a baby, you can almost guarantee that they have just raided someone's reception leftovers.

Let me say again, you are 100% going to be hungry at some point during grad school. Do whatever is legal to get a job and get money. Honestly, I have at least one classmate who has applied for food stamps and gotten them.

3. You will think about dropping out. Many times.

  I have contemplated dropping out and going home on several occasions. While the prospects of getting that Masters Degree is attractive along with all of the extra money that it can potentially bring you, this journey does not come without bouts of depression and hopelessness. Several of the people that I started this program with have succumbed to their demons and dropped out already.

 Basically, it's a lot of money, time, and effort that you put at stake. You take an expensive risk in hopes that your life will ultimately be better later on for it, but during this risk, you often wonder if it was the right risk to take. There will be that assignment that is so terrible, so truly awful, that you will be in tears, begging your professor for more time/help, and they will tell you no. For me this was my breaking point. Me and half of my classmates sat in class the day that an assignment was due weeping and begging for more time and help. We were given none. For me, if one of my classmates had not taken pity on me and helped me out, I would have failed the assignment and dropped out.

You will run into this assignment/task eventually if you decide to go on to grad school. And I am going to sound like a broken record here but you have to stick with it. If you do not, you will end up regretting it forever. And the shame. The shame will be unbearable.


4. You will take abuse with grace and not even notice it until later.

  Honestly, most of grad school is abuse. You're hungry, sleep deprived, over-worked, under-paid and under appreciated. If you have to teach while in grad school, you will take a lot of abuse from your students and not even notice it until after the fact. Undergrads are more likely to not respect you if you fill in for a professor to teach a class or lab. And while you are deserving of their respect, you will not think so until later on. Remember, you already HAVE the degree that they are working toward, but this will not make them anymore inclined to respect you. Grad students are like a joke to undergrads and sometimes professors will treat you the same way. Your students will bug the crap out of you to grade their papers/tests along with your professor. You will do so with grace, not realizing until later that you have been abused.

And this is all perfectly legal. It's simply part of academia. Undergraduates are just like children and so are professors. Graduate students are kind of the old people of academia. They want respect, but are not likely to get it very often. So take the abuse, but do so with grace. Do it with a smile because all of this will be over soon.

5. You will continuously wonder how the hell you got to grad school.

  I wonder all the time how in the hell I got to where I am. I would like to say hard work and studying, but I really have a hard time with that. Let me illustrate my point:

This is how most of us spend our four years as undergrads. We are told to read something and decide that it means there is no homework. Unless there is written work, you often times refuse to complete reading assignments. We get to class, having not read anything, but end up dominating discussion anyway. THOSE are the people who end up in grad school. We got to grad school by bsing our way through our undergraduate work. 

And when you get to grad school, you will start to have to read for homework. There is no more bsing your way through a discussion. If you do not have sources to back up a point, you will be eviscerated during discussion. So you will keep asking yourself "how the hell did I get here?" Well you got here by bsing your way through the last four years, but now you have to get into the REAL work.

6. You will seriously wonder whether or not you belong in grad school.

 I am one of the youngest people in my program. Most of the people that I entered the iSchool with have been out of school for a couple of years and have worked in libraries and have a better knowledge of what they are getting into than I do. This ultimately made me wonder how I got to grad school and whether or not I belonged here. They all seemed so much more motivated and knowledgeable than me. I realize now that it's just because they have more life experience than me and they have to work harder to get back into the study groove.

So yes, you're going to wonder whether or not you belong in grad school. The reality of it is that if you were accepted, then whoever looked over your application sure as hell thought so and that's a big deal. AND if you are lucky enough to get a scholarship from the school, then you definitely belong because they are SPENDING money on you. That means they want you for something. They see potential and you should see it too, but all too often, we as grad students do not.

7. There will be books, articles, etc. that you will read and not understand even when your professor explains them.

  My first two weeks of grad school were terrible. I was reading books and articles that I did not understand and my professors were not helping. In this case, you should not panic. This is going to happen from time to time. You are not going to understand everything you read, and sometimes I think that professors do it on purpose to knock you down a few pegs. It's okay. As long as you understand other books/articles that you have been reading, it's okay if every once in a while you do not understand a few things.

If you don't understand it, try to listen to your professor's lecture on it. And if you still don't understand, ask for clarification on the subject later, maybe during office hours. If you still do not understand, don't worry about it. Just let it go.

8. Your adviser is virtually useless.

In grad school you are assigned an adviser, just like you were as an undergrad. Remember how helpful you thought your undergrad adviser was? Yeah well you can forget about your grad adviser. They are often too busy with everything else they have to do as professors to meet with you. Last semester, I asked to meet with my faculty adviser only to find that she was less than interested in discussing my career goals with me. I never got to meet with her in person because she was "simply too busy to see me." So she asked me to send her questions via email. Even then she was less than helpful.

But remember something: Professors are very busy. It may not seem like it, but they have full schedules. And, believe it or not, you are an adult capable of making your own decisions. I know, it's mind blowing. So don't worry about your adviser. If you need to see them, insist vehemently that you must meet with them in person. If not, don't worry about it. Make your own decisions, but remember that if you screw up you have no one to blame but yourself.


9. If you get even a day off, you will use it to catch up on homework NOT sleep.

The amount of work that grad students are expected to complete in a timely manner is ridiculous. I'm not saying that you should use every waking minute of everyday on homework, but on your days off, you may be forced to do so. So, when you get a day off, make sure that you use it catching up on homework instead of sleeping. This will ensure that you spend the least amount of time possible cramming the night before an assignment is due.


10. Alcohol is your best/worst friend.

If you are not a drinker now, you will be once you start grad school. Alcohol may be expensive, especially in PA where I live because of the drink tax, but sometimes, it is more important to you than food. I have written my most brilliant papers while completely snockered off my ass, with perfect grammar, spelling, and citations and just the right amount of cynical sarcasm to make it interesting. Liquid inspiration.

But this is a healthy median that is difficult to reach. This is the thin line between being a brilliant scholar or a sloppy, pisspants drunk. This is what I mean by your worst enemy. If you drink even an ounce too much, your paper will ultimately end up terrible, or you may end up forgetting about it in your drink induced fog and decide to take a nap, have sex, get arrested, destroy public property, etc. So yeah it can definitely be your worst enemy so be VERY careful with your timing on papers. I like to start mine at least a week an a half before they're due so that if I screw up the first time, I have plenty of time to fix it and make it right.

These are the ten truths of grad school. I am not AGAINST people going to grad school. If you wanna go, great! All the more power to you! But these are the things that I wish someone had told me before I went. I could have been better prepared for the inevitable.