Tom, are you dead?....

Not really.

Sadly, I've been neglecting my blog because there isn't a grade associated with the writing I do on it. This is just a single example of the cutthroat mercenary mentality awaiting you in beautiful Grad School!!!

It goes a little like this:

The goal is to get a collection of super-educated (sometimes conflicting) individuals to all agree that you're worthy of an advanced degree. It's a monumental task, no doubt about it.
But all that fun starts AFTER you've finished your coursework.
(And I'm not there yet.)

Grad school coursework is reminiscent of the Mad Max flick, Beyond Thunderdome.
Essentially, students of a similar discipline are all thrown into a pit with various journals, surveys, databases and computing equipment and then forced to fight to the death.
OK maybe not to the death, but certainly to the "who-can-finish-first-and-curry-the-most-favor."

Thankfully when I was cast into the ring, I was lucky enough to be the only frood in there.
Sometimes it pays to be a political geographer. Yay me.

I was however, subjected to some hard truths about GS work:

1. Read nothing unless it's about your field of study. (There's not much time as it is.)



2. Write nothing unless it's towards your thesis or it gets you a grade. (B+ is just a high-level loser.)


3. All that junk about a family? Forget it. You're married to the field now, boy and you WILL be faithful! Your children are the analyses that you produce, so try to make yourself a big ol family! (Coochie-coo!)


4. Your office is your new home! Ain't it nice and roomy? Your apartment is just where you store all your crap....including what's-her-face and the anklebiters.


5. Don't try to explain what you do to your extended family. It'll just confuse them and make them think you don't know what the hell you're doing. (Which may be true, but they don't need to know that, do they?)


6. There are no gods other than the pantheon of professors you must appease. Believing in anything else is heresy! (I suggest naming them and fitting them into other famous mythological pantheons. You'd be surprised how close everyone fits!)



7. Traveling through grad school with your cohort is the equivalent of storming the beaches at Normandy on D-Day. Only a handful of you will make it through the process. The rest will have been gunned down by the Nazis.


It's a tough road to hoe, to be sure. But for me, the worst part of it all is feeling one step behind everyone. I've got to admit, I've felt pretty dumb in grad school so far.
Now one result of that is an initiative to power through my obstacles and become a better scholar.
But there are times when I'm reminded of my age and how other people I know have already bought a house, have a career and have otherwise "settled down."

At worst, it makes me want to quit. Or at least stop after an MS.
Thankfully, those days are few and far between.
For now, I'll just keep dragging my can into work every morning until I come to the next fork in my life. Then I'll look back at everything I've done and decide what to do next.

Sounds like a plan.