Yikes!!

So I just filled out my online consolidation application for my graduate student loans. EEK! Time to pour myself a drink, I think. Seeing all of those huge numbers thrown together and filling out all of those forms was necessary, but ....... eeeeeek. Why was I so stupid, to keep taking out more and more loans???

Oh wait, I know why I was so stupid. We all were. Lauren lays it out perfectly here.

Anyway, I digress. What I actually wanted to do tonight was to post a quick PSA for anyone here in the US who will be facing student loan debt (from either undergrad or grad school) after they finish - whether they graduate or quit early like yours truly.

My advice is: Consolidate your loans. 

Do it. Go here and fill out the application.

Obviously, it won't reduce your total balance due. (If only there was a web application that would do that, huh?) But it will get your payments under control - both by bringing them into one monthly payment to one vendor rather than multiple, and most likely by lowering your monthly payments.

(In my case, it looks like I will be cutting my monthly payments at least in half by consolidating. From there, of course, I can pay more every month if I want to get it paid off sooner ... but the minimum is so much more manageable than it would have been if I didn't consolidate.)

So if you weren't aware of this possibility, bookmark that link now. We regretful academics can't turn back time and take out fewer loans, but there is something you can do to minimize the fallout going forward.

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Now that that ugly financial business is out of the way ... I thought my readers might enjoy the latest Ph.D. comic, which can be found here, and which draws on recent headlines quite amusingly.

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I hope everyone has a wonderful week, and I'll write more later...

Your Monday Funnies

I've got some half-finished posts in the pipeline ... I'll get something new up later this week, I promise! Real life has intervened this week and gotten in the way of my blogging. Stupid real life. :)

In the meantime, I just ran across a comic at The Oatmeal called "Why Working at Home is Both Awesome and Horrible," and couldn't resist posting it. Something tells me that even though it's not about grad school specifically, a lot of the grad students and academics who read here will find it amusing (and possibly painfully true).

So go over there and check it out! And if anyone is artistically inclined, perhaps we could do an academic version. I'm no artist, so I'm not sure how to portray "neverending academic guilt" and "feelings of inadequacy" in visual form.

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Also, I ran across this Ph.D. Comic the other day, and found it both amusing and sad.

You know, I was at the arrows when I left - I've put in a stupid amount of time in grad school, but couldn't take it anymore - and I don't regret it. So, you know ... all isn't lost if you decide to go, as I've said many times.

If you're utterly miserable and hate it when you're at the end of grad school? You shouldn't necessarily press on just because you've come this far. But you shouldn't necessarily quit either.

Am I confusing you? Probably. What I mean is that if you find this place by googling "I hate grad school" and are trying to decide what to do, take a minute to think about exactly why you're miserable. If you're miserable because you're tired of your dissertation and your advisor and just want to go work on other projects or teach at a new school? Okay. You should probably hurry up and finish and not quit.*

This "Humor" Scares Me...

A grad student acquaintance posted this to Facebook this morning. The ensuing comments all noted how hilarious it was, and how "totally true!"

I admit that I laughed at a few of them (I am startled when I meet people who don't like to read, and I have brought work to a bar a few times).

But, really? Most of it is kind of terrifying, IMHO. Look at how many of the reasons involve the normalization of working constantly. Look how many of them involve the idea that it's totally normal to never take breaks/vacations, and of how feeling guilty if you do is "an inherent feature of relaxation." Look at the one about popping ibuprofen like they're vitamins.

So you're working constantly to the point where you work twenty hours a day and are racked with guilt if you take a break to do laundry, and you've having head and body aches ...... but it's not a sign that you need to slow down and relax and get some balance in your life? Instead, it's a joking sign that "you might be a grad student?"

Your Tuesday Funny

Since it's the end of the semester for many of you, with all of the related grading that entails ... I present the Five Stages of Grading for teachers, from the blog Not that Kind of Doctor.

It's been a couple of years since I taught, but this rang very true ... and made me laugh. I always liked teaching, but anyone who tells you that grading a giant pile of papers is anything short of utter misery is lying. Anger, denial, bargaining??? I've experienced it all. :)

Anyway, I hope that those of you who are still in academia are surviving these last few weeks intact ... and that you'll be able to enjoy the holidays and the semester break with at least a little bit of free time to enjoy your life outside of work.

Just keep in mind - you'll get everything done, and you're doing just fine. And if you're thinking you can't take it anymore, you're not alone.

Your Wednesday Funny

In honor of the upcoming Labor Day holiday ... a relevant Ph.D. comic:

Source: http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1338

Last Labor Day, I spent the entire day frantically typing cover letters and getting job market packets ready to mail on Tuesday. My partner grilled burgers outside while I sat in my study, working, and only came out once dinner was ready. I don't even think I went outside, all day long.

This Labor Day, I will be getting paid for the day even though I don't have to go into the office - I get holiday pay now!! I'm not sure what my exact plans will be, but I hope to be on the water somewhere, relaxing. If that fails, I'll be at a barbeque ... actually enjoying the weather, food, drink, and conversation for once.

I swear, I think the part that I like best about making this change has been reclaiming my free time. Don't get me wrong - I'm still working a 40 hour week, every week. But the difference is that when I'm not at work, no one expects me to be working. The change in my mental state has been astounding.

Your Wednesday Funny

Two funnies today...first,  if you are a sociologist, political scientist, anthropologist or economist, you should go check this post out immediately. Hilarious!!

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Second, In honor of any English folks who are out there reading this blog:



This is the funniest thing I've seen in awhile. If only I'd majored in English ... then I could have all the jobs.

Image from For Lack of a Better Comic.

Your Thursday Funny

This comic made me laugh, but also provided some humorous backup for my earlier observation that the idea that you can read and think and write about anything in academia is misleading. After the first few years when you're more or less allowed to explore a wide variety of areas in your field, you're expected to specialize ... and often to specialize in a direction that is consistent with what your advisors are doing and what the "hot areas" in your particular field are. The Ph.D. Comics folks are pretty observant about the reality of academic life, so trust me ... this is basically spot-on.

It's worth noting that since leaving academe almost six months ago, one of the hobbies that I've rediscovered is my love of reading. Like many grad students, over the past few years as I worked on my dissertation and other research projects, I had basically stopped reading for fun. Simply put ... if I had time for reading, I needed to be reading research in my field to keep moving on my dissertation and research.

Now that I'm done, though, I've been reading for fun like crazy. I've devoured mystery novels (my personal favorite), sci-fi novels, historical fiction, and a couple of biographies.

I've also finally gotten around to reading a few books from within my discipline that I've had on my "to-read list" for years. These are books that aren't related to my substantive research interests, but nonetheless came from the social sciences and were on topics that I found very interesting ... but again, that I had "no time" to read since I had to work around the clock on my own research. But now I have the time, so I've finally gotten around to reading a few of those books. And most of them were terrific. Interesting, informative, well-written, and engrossing. You could almost say that I've fallen back in love with my discipline - the breadth and scope of it - through leaving it and being freed from the constraints of what I'm "allowed" to read and think about.

Who knows - maybe I will even drift partially back into writing and thinking about the research in my discipline in the future ... but in a lower-pressure setting like a blog or perhaps a little bit of freelance writing.

But regardless, I'm done reading/researching only what my dissertation advisor or tenure committee wants. I'm rediscovering that freeing "life of the mind" that I was promised when I applied to graduate schools.

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I'm back in town now, and will have some more substantive posts up in the next few days. I think my brain is still struggling to recover from travel, wedding festivities, and catching back up at work. In the meantime, I see that there are still a number of folks finding this blog through Google searches indicating their misery with grad school and academia. Trust me ... there is life on the other side.

Your Tuesday Funny

From a brilliant commenter at the latest post* at "100 Reasons Not to Go To Grad School," regarding the problem of unstructured time during grad school (which can leave you either never working or constantly working). Regarding the work schedule in grad school under unlimited unstructured time:

"Step 1: allow your unstructured time to run wild like a mustang
Step 2: suffer from an incredibly acute and debilitating panic attack
Step 3: regain composure long enough to get some stuff done
Step 4: REPEAT"

"Anonymous" who left the comment ... if by some small chance you also read here, you are a genius.

Readers: this is unbelievably true, and exactly what it feels like to work in grad school. You will slack off for a few days, then suffer through an insane bout of guilt, panic, and likely a crying attack or two where you will beat yourself up for being the worst grad student ever. Then you'll steel your resolve, sit down, and get a couple things done. And will pat yourself on the back.

And the next week, you'll take one evening off to catch up on reruns of your favorite show, and the cycle will repeat itself.

This is normal for grad studenting ... but not normal for real life. Just an FYI.


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*If you are reading here and have not bookmarked the "100 Reasons" blog, do so immediately. And when you have time, read through the archives.

Your Tuesday Funny

I've mentioned before that if I'd continued down the academic path, I would wish that my research would have some effect on the public (or at least reach a public audience). However, at the same time I've often noted that research findings that get disseminated to the public aren't always reported clearly.

To that end, I ran across this comic strip today and found it pretty hilarious ... and accurate. If you're someone who's ever compared research findings to the way they're reported in the media, you may also enjoy it.

http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1174

Ah, the divide between academic research and real-world understandings of said research. Will we ever breach it? :)

Ph.D. Simulator

I'm working on a longer post, so this is shaping up to be a three-post Saturday. Hmmm, I wonder what I'm trying to avoid... :)

Anyway, I ran across this At-Home Ph.D. Simulator, posted at Metafilter from a thread at Phinished.org (apparently, although I am not a member, so I can't confirm).

The At-Home Ph.D. Simulator:
1. Give a $30,000 donation to the university of your choice, on your credit card.
2. Go to the library and write. Write pages and pages. Every time you reach 50 pages, burn all of them. Repeat for several years.
3. Take out an ad on Craiglist for someone to pretend to be your advisor. Set up periodic meetings with them where they read your drafts and give you the exact opposite of the advice they gave you three months ago.
4. Adjunct a course at your local college. Give lots of written work. Submit everything you get to one of the online plagiarism detectors. Despair for humanity.
5. After ten years, throw a dart at a map. Move wherever it lands for the rest of your life.

Heh. Sounds about right to me!