I have spent a bit too much time lately looking over my life. Where I’ve been…where I’m going. Here’s another question I have pondered over the years:

I think the answer is “no.” Although it did mean I graduated. Unfortunately the cool research I did has been perfectly useless in finding a job.

Another comic from Phd comics…

Finally an explanation why the jokes I find funny almost no one gets. We were a funny bunch in grad school, but that humor just doesn’t work outside chemistry graduate school. So now in social situations, I don’t tell jokes. No, alcohol doesn’t help. In fact, I can speak even more coherently about chemistry with several drinks. I do have my limit though. Coherent, then sick. So it goes.

While I find this graphic hysterical, I’m sure that anyone who hasn’t been to graduate school doesn’t get it. That’s what an advanced degree will get you…confused stares and people thinking “dork!” or worse:  saying it aloud.

Some experiments should never happen.

Ever seen a refrigerator like this? Even workplace refrigerators can get this disgusting.

When avoiding your advisor in graduate school, a graduate student will go to great lengths. The amount of effort that goes into avoidance could be put to use in writing or research, but it’s not. I don’t think this is just a phenomena particular to graduate students. The diagram below could apply to any cubicle farm anywhere.

Another trip down memory lane…

Boy am I glad I don’t have to sit on a couch like this again. Although we had a couch like this in our office, it was too gross to sit on. It was nearly impossible to get off (or out of) the couch once you sat down. Ours was probably a dumpster save. The answer to the question above…NO!!!

Part of graduate school includes a Friday afternoon seminar, affectinately known as “colloquium.” I think most schools put them on Friday afternooons at 4 pm. We were supposed to go. I know plenty of people who didn’t. I didn’t. They couldn’t require that you go–just suggest that you attend. These seminars are the most boring in the world, unless a graduate student was giving one. These poor visiting professors had very little clue on how to present data so that everyone stayed awake. It didn’t help that these seminars are held in a lecture hall in the dark. Here’s something that would have kept us busy though. I might have attended more seminars…well, maybe not.

Yes, there were distractions in graduate school. Television, friends, drinking, etc. Surfing the internet was another way to pass the time. I was fond of just plain doing nothing or getting into hobbies that took up extra time. I became a master procrastinator. It’s the disease of graduate school especially by the third year. I began to wonder if I was ever going to get out of there. And Einstein was right–time for the gruadte student does slow down to a standstill.

The ability to calculate how long before you graduate is highly overrated. I would never have wanted to calculate the time it would take. I would have been even less motivated if I thought it would take forever. There is a limit though. Most universities allow 10 years for you to complete your degree once you have reached a certain stage in your graduate studies. The clock doesn’t start ticking from the time you began your degree. I suppose it depends on the university as well.

My advisor was very flexible. Basically, you controlled when you finished–not him. This means that once your motivation went to zero, you could be floundering in ABD (all but dissertation, aka all but dead) hell. However, you can’t reach ABD until all research is done leading up to writing that thick book that no one will probably ever read. You’re required to get it printed and bound in hardcover and pay for it to be microfiched. There are the copyright fees as well. You never order just one hardbound copy. The university requires a copy, as does the department and your advisor. Then, of course, you can get one for yourself (highly recommended as you never know when you might need the information again–say for an interview) and one to bestow on your parents. Basically outside of yourself, no one reads the thing. Regular people wouldn’t understand it, so the “gift” to the parents means very little other than they are thankful that you will be earning a real salary rather than the pittance you got as a graduate teaching assistant. Of course, that is dependent on if you were able to get a job out of graduate school. Some specialties just aren’t conducive to finding a job other than teaching and torturing your own graduate students. My experience in chemistry graduate school is that the least able and least talented went into teaching. Those who were really good at teaching went into industry.

I remember going to graduate school with lots of enthusiasm and trepidation. I worried that I would flunk out. I worried constantly about tests and grades, which really wasn’t all the different from undergraduate. A friend helped me get over it, but it took until going through comprehensive exams to really get over the worry. Comprehensive exams began in the second year. I think I was about half way through them before I quit worrying so much, but I did prepare.

I came across Newton’s Three Laws of Graduation while browsing phdcomics. There’s more truth there than you know. Around the end of the second year, my enthusiasm waned. It waned big time. I was about ready to quit. Work came to a stand still–nearly. Procrastination kicked in. Although it didn’t kick in fully until it was time to write my dissertation. Funny how you can find a myriad of things to do to avoid finishing. It’s mostly to avoid the firing squad called your committee at the thesis defense.

I liked this particular cartoon from phdcomics. It reminds me of our lab, and it works for other workplaces as well. Click the comic to see it larger.

Beginning with the red square, my grad school lab could be freezing cold, so I’d put a zero there. Since I worked with lasers, I worked in the dark as well. It could be rather difficult to stay awake if you didn’t get enough sleep the night before. “Not enough sleep” is a permanent condition in grad school. My advisor (for workplace, insert manager here) was probably a “1″. He was quite calm most of the time. Although he had this really annoying habit of not answering your question if he didn’t think you did enough thinking and research on your own. You had to ask the question in the manner that told him you had thought things out a bit first and done quite a bit of journal searching and reading.

As for the white square, for years I’d say it was more “VOR,” but the past couple of years before I left it changed to “BIO”. We had one particularly grad student who smelled. He didn’t just bother those of us int he group. We shared offices with other graduate students from other groups. The stink bothered them too. They wanted me to acquaint the guy with soap before I left. None of them wanted to be the one to tell him that he stunk. It was gross. If you were lucky, keeping about four feet away meant your nose wasn’t stinging. I never got around to the anonymous letter, soap and deodorant instruction before I left. I had better things to do, and I thought they should handle it themselves.

I’d say that the blue square should have a “3″. Productivity could be sucked out of you almost as soon as you walked in the door. It shouldn’t have been that way, but it was. When I taaobutbut productivity, I’m talking about getting the stuff done necessary for the thesis. I spent a year working on hardware and software just to obtain data. That year was useless when it came to advancing my thesis. Only the data mattered. We also moved the lab at one point. Moving a laser lab means six months of downtime. More time lost.

Now my last job, I’d put a “4″ in the red square because pump alleys are notoriously loud, but climate is completely erratic (unbearably hot to unbearable cold). I’d put a “3″ in the yellow square. For the white box: “COR”. I’d give the blue box a “4″. I think several of my coworkers would agree since when I left someone suggested not returning because there was no advancement.

I would like to hear about others’ hazard rating of their workplaces. Hopefully, yours is better than mine was.