You know you're a doc student when...

The instructions for your midterm essay assignment end with: "please limit your response to 3-5 double spaced pages"...and this induces a mild panic attack.

The roof is on fire?

My classes for this semester are scheduled early in the week, leaving Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays open for writing.  While it certainly makes the early part of the week stressful and busy, I'm kind of enjoying this set-up because I can get into my writing "groove" in the Dungeon/Bat Cave* and not have to worry about being interrupted by classes, undergrads, or much of anything, really...

Except for today.

It was close to quitting time and I was hoping to get another hour or so of writing in before I left campus for the day.  I'm mid-sentence when the building's fire alarm goes off.  Eh, whatever...some fool probably didn't want to take an exam and pulled the alarm...it's happened before.  I decide to wait it out - surely they'll turn it off soon, right?  Wrong.  Alarm keeps going off.  I open my door and see classes evacuating.  Damn...it's probably a fire drill...guess I should leave so I don't get in trouble.  I take my sweet time in packing up my MacBook (rule #1 of doctoral programs: your laptop goes everywhere you go), cursing under my breath at the moron responsible for busting my writing "groove".  I trudge up the stairs and as I'm walking through the lobby to the doors...

3 firefighters bust through the doors in full gear with a hose.

Yup.  Apparently a real fire.  In my building.  There are already 2 fire trucks outside and we watch as 3 more come screaming down the street.  The dean of our college is running around (in high heels and a pencil skirt, no less - totally impressed), trying to figure out what the hell is going on.  Turns out a heater in the building overheated, sparked, and triggered the fire alarm.  So not quite a real fire, but still crazy.  The firefighters checked the building out and let us go back in about 15 minutes later.  But, of course, I couldn't get any more writing done and decided to just call it a day.

Moral of the story: undergrads should stop pulling fire alarms so I can take them seriously in the future.  Oh, and I shouldn't be a moron and try to ignore fire alarms.

*The Dungeon/Bat Cave is my windowless basement office that has a leaky ceiling, the occasional cockroach, and neither heat nor A/C - and sometimes the housekeeping staff even cleans it!  Another story for another day...

It's what's for dinner.

Today a law student friend and I were comparing our way-too-busy lives...this is an actual excerpt from that conversation:

Law Student Friend: "This is how busy my life is - I had ginger ale, popcorn, and rocky road ice cream for dinner last night."
PhD Wannabe: "You just made me feel far less ashamed about eating a Hot Pocket and a handful of pretzel M&Ms for dinner last night.  Thank you.  Though I feel like I should eat some actual fruits and/or vegetables at some point this week."

So I made myself eat a salad for dinner...followed by fried mozzarella sticks.  Whatever...still chalking it up as a victory.

Juggling

The phrase "keep all the balls in the air" has been on my mind a lot lately.  It's a concept I've long been familiar with as a lifelong overachiever.  In high school, it wasn't abnormal for my days to span 18-20 hours: waking up at 5:30am for 6:45am student council meetings, a full day of honors/AP classes, 3-4 hours of dance practice, meetings for one of the various student organizations in which I was involved, evening orchestra practices or violin lessons, and finally making it home to eat dinner and start homework at roughly 9-10pm.  Clearly, I learned nothing from this as I've similarly overloaded my life as a doctoral student.  On top of the 3 reading- and writing-heavy classes I'm taking this semester (saying that I'll be producing at least 100 pages of writing for my classes alone would be a conservative estimate), I'm co-authoring a chapter for an edited book, working on a new research project, "managing" (long story) a scholar at another university for said research project, co-organizing a interdisciplinary research symposium for doctoral students in my discipline and another school on campus, leading planning efforts for a research conference that will occur on campus this spring, advising an undergraduate student organization, and am on the advisory board for a small college in New England.  I'm constantly afraid of dropping a ball and screwing something up.  Don't get me wrong - I've chosen to do all of these things...I could have said no at any time, so should I even be complaining?
Maybe it's the "publish or perish" mentality in academia...it's not just for tenure-seekers anymore.  It's almost like your CV has to be 8-10 pages long to even be considered for a tenure-track position these days.  I felt almost guilty while talking to a former officemate last week...she graduated in May with no publications and has been applying to jobs with no luck, not even a single interview.  I could potentially have 3-4 publications by the end of my 2nd year, and am still worried about whether I'll be competitive in the job market in a couple of years...which is why I've chosen to overload myself to the point of having weekly nervous breakdowns.  I'm fortunate to have an incredible advisor who continues to offer fantastic opportunities to me, and she's judgmental (in a good way) enough that I know she wouldn't be giving me these chances if she didn't think I have a shot at making it in this crazy line of work...and while I'm stressed out pretty much all the time, I'm happy with what I'm doing and I do enjoy it.  But that lingering thought of whether all of this juggling is/will be worth it constantly sits at the back of my mind...

Misspelling makes Baby Jesus cry.

I'm not teaching this semester, just guest lecturing in a few undergrad courses in my department (thank God - I enjoy teaching, but the chaos that comes with it would be way too much this semester), but next time I do, I plan to distribute this comic to my students on the first day of class.  I've just about convinced myself to pony up $12 for a poster to put in my office.  If I had a dollar for every time I had to correct the spelling of the word "definitely" in essays and homework assignments when I TA'ed an Intro class last semester, I could afford to buy some really nice bottles of booze to help me forget that these kids might one day run the country.

But undergrads aren't the only ones who are guilty of this.  I passed the comic along to a friend who is a doctoral candidate at my university, and we decided that those in academia are among the worst offenders.  It isn't abnormal for me to get an email from a professor or research supervisor with "your/you're" used incorrectly...in fact, it happens at least once a week.  Our mutual takeaway: if these fools can get PhD's, gosh darn it, so can we.

More to come...

...but let's get this thing started.  I'm in my 2nd year of this crazy journey, pursuing a PhD in education at a large public university on the east coast that shall remain nameless.  The purpose of this blog is to share my daily experiences as a doctoral student - the good, the bad, the funny, and the downright ridiculous.

I know this is brief, but I hope you'll come back and check out what's to come...