Confessions of an Engineering Grad Student!

I wrote this as an article for my university's Graduate Student Council's (GSC)newsletter. The editor told me that she is going to have to chop it up due to space constraints (or maybe she just doesnt like it that much!). Nevertheless, to inflict such a great loss upon mankind isnt my kind of thing. So I am posting the entire draft here. This was written for a demograph that is familiar with Olemiss and the town of Oxford...so if you dont fully comprehend certain parts please call upon the considerate person inside you and move on! ;)

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Confessions of an Engineering Grad Student
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Being a grad student is no easy task. Being an engineering grad is even tougher. If you all were in a large hall and I had said this out loudly you would definitely shout back “Oh Yeah!” and would be intently waiting for me to say something wise. Of course you would be disappointed! Not very different from what’s going to happen here! Nevertheless, as Pink Floyd says “the show must go on”.
When I set out to write an article for this newsletter I had no idea what would make an interesting read. Someone suggested that I should write about life as an international graduate student. So I did some thinking. And I realized that so many aspects of my life had changed when I moved on from being an undergrad to a grad that they merited a compilation somewhere. So much for trying to make this an ‘interesting read’. You can safely remove the ‘interesting’ from the above line and toss it straight out of the window next your workstation (God help you if you don’t have a window!). What I have put down is an arbitrary and utterly disconnected list of things that should help you get deep insights into life as an Engineering Graduate Student from a Whole Different Country (EGSWDC...f you will!)

Starting on a somewhat serious note, life as an undergrad is so much different compared to life as a grad in terms of the amount of studying one does. During my undergraduate years all I did was hang around with friends and goof about (didn’t we all? ;). But now I put in long hours of work to do grueling research that will ultimately lead to every man, woman and child in this world leading a much better and more fulfilling life (yeah...right!). Maybe it’s the feeling of responsibility that comes with getting paid for your work or the wisdom that comes as we get older :P but now it’s not uncommon for me to spend long nights in my department trying to get some work done. So much so that I have my own pillow in my office for a quick snooze, am good friends with the janitor of my building and have nice talks with her at 4 in the morning, nights and days have reversed for me and I love working on weekends because everything is so quiet and peaceful without any bothersome classes!

Secondly, one of my biggest cribs about this world is the obvious lack of plenty of women in engineering grad school. As you might have guessed by now, this leads to a social/party life that is just about as exciting as......a really old and dull object. Not that this bothers me too much. I am not a very clubbing person but I’ve seen and heard my many EGSWDC friends whine about it so I speak for them. Social life for me consists of an occasional get-together of friends, random sporting event, once a while movies, even the GSC social ;) and these leave me quite content. I see the Thursday/Friday/weekend night parties that happen on campus and I am reminded of the once care-free life that I used to lead. I realized how boring I had become where a lab mate and I were once made fun of by a pizza delivery guy for staying up late at night in school and ordering pizza on a football game weekend! Things were put into perspective for me when during the course of a recent conversation I had with a friend I realized I knew the exact operational timings of the swimming pool at the Turner Center but didn’t know anything about when the bars in Oxford open and close! I can’t believe I am wasting the last few years of my youth this way and don’t want to do anything about it! :P

Food...cause of both agony and bliss. The agony of not being able to find a convenient source when hunger pangs hit at really odd hours of the day (like 3 in the morning) and the bliss of finally managing to get your hands on a pizza or burrito at those same odd hours. If it had not been for places like Taco Bell or Papa Johns that operate late into the night or for the heaven on earth called Huddle House that not only is open 24hrs but also serves the tastiest omelettes I’ve ever eaten, I would have turned insane by now. And who can deny the comfort of not having to go anywhere/spend any of your cash that comes with the ‘free pizza’ that is given at almost every meeting that happens and you care to attend. All it takes is a little patience and some nodding in agreement (or disagreement) while the person talks about some stuff and within an hour you are rewarded with the wonderful smell of freshly made pizza. Haa...bliss!

Finally...the internet! An unavoidable consequence of spending a lot time doing research on a net-accessible computer is the huge amounts of time wasted away browsing the world wide web. An hour of research warrants a 15 minute browsing break where I end up doing a multitude of tasks like checking my email (for the 100th time that day...and its only 1pm), reading the news updates, checking the temperature outside (online...instead of just going out), checking the temperatures for the next 10days, looking for good deals on just about ANYTHING that might prop up out of nowhere, checking my own and various other blogs, typing in reviews about movies severely criticizing the tastes of those who dislike your choices, messaging/chatting with others, checking my email once more...the list could just go on and on if I cared. And once all this is done I invariably turn towards my lab mates and ask them if anyone wants to accompany me to check their P.O.Box and/or get some coffee! Of course this doesn’t happen all the time (being the responsible fellow that I am ;) and I must add that I did exaggerate things a bit...so don’t start judging me!

That’s about it folks...and as parting gift for continuing reading till here instead of turning the page I leave you with my very own “You know you are a...” list. Use it wisely and these should help you spot an engineering grad student almost instantly. But be nice to them...we aren’t that bad! In any case you know you belong to that much joked about, loved/hated, exploited, extremely lazy yet hardworking in their own special way, geeky clique of engineering grads if...

0) You start a list with 0 instead of 1.
1) You prefer a particular brand/type of pizza over others.
2) However that above doesn’t matter in case the pizza is free.
3) You secretly like being a geek but think twice before admitting it openly.
4) You know about the geek code and you not only consider it to be very cool but also have your own code and have used it somewhere.
5) You think PhD comics is very funny and heartwarmingly close to reality and wish you could sketch as well to start your own strip.
6) Someone gifting you a 1GB flash drive excites you way more than the other ‘mundane’ things.
7) You draw parallels in your field with everything. (For eg...here’s one from Electromagnetics...“Oh they weren’t meant for each other...there was too much of a phase mismatch!”).
8) You love geeky jokes and look down upon people who don’t understand them (like the above one).
9) Every time someone says “Wow...grad student eh? You must be smart”...you wave your hand dismissively but in your heart of hearts you think “I RULE”.
10) You are baffled as how can anyone find the quantitative section of the GRE hard but avoid saying this in a large group of people for the fear of being seen as arrogant.
11) You are jealous of the guy who has a better laptop than you...it doesn’t matter that you have a better car/apartment...what kills you is that his laptop is faster and slicker than yours!
12) You have at least one shirt from geeks.com (actually it’s a good website...I strongly recommend it!)
13) This is not the first ‘list of things that show you are a grad student’ that you have read.
14) You still like it and want to pass this to your colleague...(do it anyway man!)

And remember...there is a world out there that needs to be saved and made better and it is upon us, the graduate students to accomplish just that. So good luck and keep the faith! Adios!