Since I have an amazing way of disappearing and reappearing on this website, I thought I might explain why. My explanation might not make sense, but neither does the journey of a Ph.D. student. Hell, this post might not even make sense. Does life even make sense? I could argue “yes,” but I am also pretty firm on being able to argue “no.” Does anyone really have any real answers? Not in Graduate School.

Grace Downunder had a fantastic post introducing her series on surviving college probably on the day I burned my palm by trying to cook and share the kitchen with my wife. You might think that has nothing to do with this post, but it really has everything to do with my ethnographic analysis of graduate school that relies solely on virtually no outside empirical evidence. I am typing with one hand, on a break from my dissertation, and finding myself coming out of my alternate reality. I am also starting to realize the more I learn, the less I know. While I could spend hours writing about what I don’t know, this post will be related to what I do know. This is the Grace Underfire survival guide to graduate school.

1) Common Sense = (K+U*G/Y) / (F/D)

…where K (K=B*J*A-H: Knowledge = Books read * journal articles read / articles published – hours spent in lab) + U (Useless information read online) * G (# of Graduate Assistantships)/Y (Years in school pre-K-present) all divided by F (Financial Aid Debt)/ D (Distance from permanent home to grad school)

Did you know that a pan is hot when it comes out of an oven? Yes. Did Socrates? Did Nietzsche? Did I? I don’t think so. Who has the brain capacity to hold such knowledge when there is still a possibility of solving the god question? Descartes meditations + the answer from the equation above will likely guide you to a fairly unclear answer on whether or not you will do stupid things to yourself or others. The more you learn, the less you know. That’s really the only thing that seems like common sense. That, and the critical historical analysis of race and higher education.

2) You don’t know anything.

I know it might seem like repetition, but this is not about common sense. This is really me telling you that you don’t really know anything. While you think you have it all figured out, 10 – 15 scholars will tell you you are full of shit. They are probably right. They spent years and years talking to people about the migratory patterns of finches in the Midwestern states, and you are just wrong. You are always going to be wrong, because you will always be missing something from your theory. While you might argue that birds actually do fly, they might argue that birds soar vs. fly because flying is actually a misunderstood truth based on velocity, weight, and elements in the atmosphere that is perpetuated by a leftist media built by a capitalistic conglomeration in Southeast Texas.

3) Using big words.

I would love to spend time generating some sort of amazing use of heteronormative practices on pedagogical leanings in middle school educators, but my palm still hurts. Instead, I am going to give you a link to a Dissertation Generator (link http://www.brysons.net/generator/index.cgi). This website will show you what kind of words you will be using in graduate school. The thing to really understand is that no one really knows what these words mean, but they seem to use them at every chance. I could just tell you I am writing a dissertation on Anton Chekov’s Three Sisters, but this generator gives you examples of dissertations that you could do.

1. The Homosocial Destabilizing The Proletariat: Anton Chekhov, Three Sisters and Mythos
2. Illness and Power in Three Sisters: Anton Chekhov Altering Feminist Subject
3. Politics and Memory in Three Sisters: Anton Chekhov Violating Resistant Hegemony
4. Ventriloquizing, (Re)producing, Smuggling: Objectification in Anton Chekhov and the Objectified Ideology of Tyranny in Three Sisters
5. Tracing the Fictive Corpses in Anton Chekhov: Three Sisters and Ideology

If you know 50% or more of the words above, you are probably in graduate school. If not, you should analyze the heteroscedasticity of the snowball sample group I surveyed about whether or not I care.

I am tired. That’s another thing you should know about graduate school. You will always be tired, overworked, underpaid, underappreciated, and bigger than you were in undergrad. You also drink more. You have to. This is pure survival. Get used to it. Anyone else have any survival guide tips?