If it doesn't kill you..... Then you survived

A guide to survival by someone who should not have survived this long Grad student :: Woman :: Klutz

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Surviving a night out with your friends

Congratulations. You have managed to make real human-like plans to go out with friends. This will involve no work and socializing like a human being. 

Step 1: Make sure you know the time and place of the plans. Put it on a calendar or something. People actually want to see you for some strange reason - if you are late or miss it they may change their minds.

Step 2: The day of the aforementioned event, schedule some time to get ready. Take a nap/do work/watch TV instead.

Step 3: Twenty minutes before you are supposed to leave, finally start to get ready. Make sure to look fabulous - you don't see these people often!

Step 4: You're late! Hurry up. No one cares what you look like anyway. 

Step 5: Get to the restaurant/bar. You're five minutes late and still the first one here. Pray that you haven't been stood up as you order a drink.

Step 6: Ten minutes later, one of your friends cancels via text. You are at this point positive that the rest will cancel soon too. But then.... people start coming!

Step 7: You've forgotten how to socialize. Remember: Do not talk about yourself. No one wants to hear about that. Only talk about the weather. 

Step 8: Drink more to alleviate nerves.

Step 9: Your friend suggests moving the party to a club. Take a shot before you go. Tequila will make you dance better.

Step 10: Do whatever your friends want, despite the fact that you have to do an assignment first thing tomorrow. You don't get hangovers anyway.

Step 11: Dance on tables, bars, etc. Get kicked out of the club for being too drunk.

Step 12: Stumble back home. Congrats - you were social. Same time next week?

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Surviving a class that you didn't prepare for

Wake up, have some caffeine, check your planner .... and OH SHIT. You did not do the assignment for class. You forgot/did the wrong assignment/were too drunk to know what day it was. Now what?

Step 1: Did you ever do this reading before for another class? Check your records.

Step 2a: Congrats - you have notes from the past. Life is good - well, for that reading out of the fifty you didn't do for today.

Step 2b: Nope. Never. Move on to step 3.

Step 3: In the few minutes before class, skim the readings. Hit the highlights: Title, subtitle, section titles, figures. Read as much of the intros and conclusions as you can.

Step 4: Google the authors. You can tell a lot about what they are going to say by a quick look at their CVs.

Step 5: Go to class. Get there a couple of minutes early. It makes you look more confident and thus prepared.

Step 6: Have any questions about life you've wanted to ask the professor? Ask them as soon as they arrive. This has a chance of spilling over into the first few minutes of class.

Step 7: When the professor is giving the lecture portion of the class, ask lots of questions. This increases the chance of not getting to all of the readings.

Step 8: Oh no - its time to talk about the readings. Keep your mouth shut. Nod vigorously when the professor or the smartest person in the room speaks. If asked why you are nodding, simply say that you agree and restate what was just said.

Step 9: Damn. The professor asked you about a specific reading. DO NOT PANIC. Go to step 10 a-c.

Step 10a: You have previous notes about this reading. Whip them out and check them. You can thus show that you took detailed notes - you've just forgotten what you said.

Step 10b: You've never read this before - but you know about the vague topic. Pose a question to the professor about the larger topic this belongs to. BAM. You are deep, thoughtful and provocative - and you showed a deeper interest in the topic.

Step 10c: You have never read this article nor do you have any prior knowledge on the subject. Make a guess. When you are wrong, guess again. Be vague. "Search" for the right word. Guess what? If you mess up the first time, but get it "right" after, you can still play it off as you knew it but you said it wrong. Classes are a giant con: No one remembers the misses, so long as you get it right in the end.

Step 11: Drag out any conversation that you actually understand. If you run out of time, that will give you another week to read that reading before it comes up again.

Step 12: Class is over. Go to the bar. That was stressful. You need a drink.

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Surviving a week in grad school: Taking classes edition

Grad school classes: No one will ever look at your GPA or grades, so why do you care about how you do in a class? Who knows.... but then again, if you didn't care you probably wouldn't be in this mess in the first place. So, time to get ready to survive yet another week in grad school.

Step 1: Sunday night: Realise that you have a huge assignment/paper/presentation tomorrow that you had actively blocked out of your memory due to the mere stress of thinking about it.

Step 2: Whip out the energy drinks/coffee/etc and stay up all night working on said assignment/paper/presentation. 

Step 3a: You managed to stay up all night and finish it. Try not to fall asleep in class...

Step 3b: You fell asleep. Whoops! Do the bare minimum when you wake up. Realise that your bare minimum now is probably more than it was in college. Be okay with winging it.

Step 4: Time to work on tomorrow's assignment! But you are exhausted from trying to stay up all night. Nap.

Step 5: You napped too long! And after checking the syllabus, you find that you have to present on 50 pages of German/read a book on a random subtopic/write a paper on something you have never heard of before. Energy drinks and coffee - you're going to need to pull an all nighter again!

Step 6: Repeat steps 3-5 as needed

Step 7: Go to the bar Friday night. You can catch up on sleep later - you need a drink after such a stressful week!

Step 8: Wake up Saturday with a hangover. Stay in bed all day attempting to read, but failing. Fall asleep at about 7 pm due to not having slept all week.

Step 9: Get up on Sunday - you feel so much better! Wow! But now you realise you haven't done anything yet this weekend! Time to make a to-do list and schedule so that you can avoid this all again. Make sure that you schedule in time for sleeping and plan to do assignments ahead of time.

Step 10: Remember that you have to be an adult. Pay the bills, do the laundry, do the dishes, feed the dog if he hasn't died yet, etc. 

Step 11: Readjust your schedule as you haven't done any of your assignments today either. Good thing you don't have a lot of assignments due this week...

Step 12: Repeat steps 1-11.

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Surviving Grad School Papers: Hemingway Style

Ahh the days when a "paper" was some five page droll that you threw together the night before class....

Nope. This is grad school. Congrats. You have a 30 page paper on some random little subtopic that nobody cares about even you but which is tangentally related to some topic which you actually think is super cool. And it's due next week.

So you and me - we're going to rock this Hemingway style. 

Step 1: Get inspired. "Life experience" as it were. You're in grad school, so you can't go to war or anything as badass as that. So instead, maybe you go Nick Miller style and go to the zoo. Or just watch one episode of New Girl - that's close enough. Clear your mind. Some would call this procrastination. I call in inspiration.

Step 2: Make a plan. Scheduling is your new best friend. Why? It's productive. It's useful. It's responsible. And its a wonderful waste of time. 

Step 3: Read the 2-3 main articles or books on the topic to get a solid information base. Unfortunately, in my field this normally involves Google Translate.

Step 4: Write down all ideas/rants/anything - Hemingway style Grab your favorite bottle of whisky, put on some music, and just write that bitch. This should be more than 3 days before the paper is due.

Step 5: During your massive hangover, sit in bed, eat pizza and read. Unfortunately you are not reading that funny book by Mindy Kaling. You are incapacitated, and probably won't take in much right now. But you can read what you wrote last night (hopefully there are no emails or texts to read too). Find those couple of ideas that were actually drunken masterpieces. Congrats - you have the thesis to your paper. 

Step 6: More "life experience" while you recover.

Step 7: Read through the information related to your awesome thesis. You only have one day to do this, so don't get bogged down. Again, Google Translate is your best friend - at least in my field. 

Step 8: Hemingway it up again! Write that damn paper. Just try to hit page limit before you pass out. 

Step 9: In your miserable hangover state, edit your paper. You will hate the world so much, that you will be a fabulously mean editor. 

Step 10: Repeat steps 8-9 as needed.

Step 11: Read through your brilliance. You are the Hemingway of your field. Make a conclusion avoiding pop culture references. Because let's face it - no one who reads this paper will actually get them. 

Step 12: Send it off! Have some of your favorite whiskey to celebrate.