the life of a graduate student

The Life of a Graduate Student

Alarm goes off at 7:30am. Flail wildly to hit the damn thing off. Fall out of bed, stagger into the bathroom. Spend long time examining toes on the toilet seat. Stare into mirror. Note bags under eyes expanding slowly. Hair unkempt. Shove toothbrush into my mouth while pondering the latest dilemma on Grey’s Anatomy. Is Addison to be pitied or hated? Secretly acknowledge that want to be Addison. Shower briefly. As housemate said, the only thing I achieve with any regularity every day is keeping my ass clean.

Emerge from bathroom clean if not exactly shiny. Walk from bathroom to room seems like an arctic corridor. Its -15 deg Celsius outside. Wash one bowl in the overflowing sink harrumphing at slovenliness of housemates (including me). Pour whatever cereal there is from multiple boxes. Milk is slightly off but decide not to think about it. Chow down in 4 minutes flat. Open door to room. Now that I can see properly (without haze of sleep blinding me), my room has been the victim of a nuclear holocaust. Luckily I wasn’t there while it happened, or else I might be dead.

Head out door 8am. Head down to avoid the gigantic sheet of ice that has formed outside house and leads all the way to the train station. Descend 20 storeys into train station. As usual on my train, there’s Alfie, the drunk guy who catches the same train every day and has the same things to say: Clinton is a pervert! Thank God we have Bush in da House!. I look at the ads in the train. Someone will pay 200 dollars to me if they can study my sleep habits for a month.

8:37am Arrive at school. Race to get a coffee jostling the 100 other sleepy-eyed students trying to get a coffee before first class. Hah! They don’t call me Singaporean for nothing! Get coffee, inhale deeply and race into class. As usual professor is on time, looking as though he has been up for hours, which in fact, he has. Bust out the laptop and check email. Nothing from my friends! Losers! How do they deserve friend status if they can’t even email me! Check the popular news and blog sites. Ponder what I am going to do over the summer. Check briefly what lecturer is talking about. Oh right the F test which tests for joint significance of variables in a multivariate regression ruling out heteroskedasticity. I have no idea what this means. I also fail to understand why a word such as heteroskedasticity exists in the English language. Professor mentions that we have a test next week. I sit up! A test! How come no one told me about this before? Deeply resent the lack of notice until friend tells me everyone knew about it 2 months ago. If I had attended class I might have known.

Finally the class, which seems interminable is over. It’s my first and last class for the day. Its 10am. And my day has just started, once the pesky classes are over.

Oh the life of a graduate student.