Tuesday, October 5, 2010

The Graduate Nod

You know how sometimes you sit down to do something with the intention of being so productive that you'll impress even yourself but you end up just sitting in front of your computer screen for three hours with your mouth half open, drooling a little bit, checking twitter every two minutes and watching clips of SNL that people posted on your Facebook wall? No? Me neither. And that's certainly not what I've been doing for the past week...

J.K (Rowling) I've been (sort of) productive and have even finished (most of) my flashcards of vocabulary words in preparation for the GRE, have gotten my school supplies (three notebooks and one new highlighter), and have made three new (genius mixes) iTunes playlists in anticipation of all the studying I'm going to be doing in the next 10 weeks before I make my triumphant return (for three weeks) to the states to celebrate Washington's crossing of the Delaware (FREEDOM!).

I'm gonna go ahead and say that any post without a George Washington reference is a lost post 

Anyway, today is my first day of graduate school. I've only had 1 out of my 3 classes (The Late Bronze Age Aegean), but I can say this with all the certainty of my 23 years of experience on this world: graduate students are possibly the worst humans. We are walking contradictions of what we wanted to be when we were little kids and exhibit all the telltale signs of people who are trying so hard to accomplish something first and best that you can literally see the fire in our eyes. Granted, that could be the reflection of the fire we have just started at the library to avoid a deadline, but that is neither here nor there. We walk around with our various forms of carrying cases containing computers, text books that we refuse to return to the library even though eight other students are waiting to photocopy the same article for class tomorrow, notebooks, half eaten breakfast bars, silenced cellphones, and empty glasses cases cause we (I) have forgotten the actual lenses at home. 

Dialogue: 
Reasonable Person: Katie, you've been a graduate student for three hours. Give me a break with your cynicism.
Katie: YOU DON'T EVEN KNOW ME! WHERE THE HELL IS MY TEXT?!

fin


My favorite thing that I have experienced today is the "graduate nod". I saw it once or twice during some anthropology seminars at NU that graduate students sat in on, but I had not, until an hour ago, experienced it with such vigor and in such high numbers. Definition of the graduate nod: a slow and steady nodding of the head as professors or colleagues talk to you so that they know for sure that you're not only following what you're saying, but that you really understand whatever it is they're saying to you with your whole soul. This is the graduate school equivalent of that dude in your 150 person lecture that couldn't keep his hand down cause he just had, HAD to tell the professor that when he went to Italy with his family last summer he saw Michaelangelo's David and noticed that if you get under the statue itself his expression changes to one of fear instead of quiet contemplation. All those kids are now in graduate school.
Pictured: a young Katie-type nerd who wouldn't shut up and put her hand down in lecture cause she had to tell the professor that she visited the Francthi cave and totally knows what he's talking about. She'll learn the graduate nod soon, though. 

I'm actually sitting in the archaeology common room right now and it's full of people who are on their lunch break and could be spying on me so I keep surreptitiously clicking back to the other tab I have opened on my browser (ESPN) so that people won't know the horrifying truth: I'm a blogger. Who loves run-on sentences. Woof.


Well, it's off to Themes, Thought, and Theory in World Archaeology. And then Early Egypt and Sudan from 10,000 BC. And I'm pretty sure someone just melted plastic in the microwave cause it smells like a glue-gun in here. I feel like George Bluth, sr. after he spent too long in the hot tub.
His wisdom defined a generation. 


Currently listening to: Bob Dylan The Bootleg Series 3
Currently reading: The Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larsson
Currently craving: For Harry Potter to stop being such a tease and show himself already. I know he's around here somewhere. Jeez!
Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you: the internet. 


....but seriously Harry. Enough with this coy game of cat-and-mouse. 

Peace, love, and awkward pictures on the internet that I can't help but enjoy.

Love,
Blowfish.



1 comment:

  1. remember this: you are the best of the worst humans, and for that i still love you.

    ReplyDelete