One Year Down, Many More To Go

I’m finally at the end of my first year of PhD-ing, and here’s what I’ve discovered:

1.) Learning is like growing out your hair. You don’t see it getting any longer, until one day you look at an old photo of yourself and realize it’s down to your knees.

2.) Thirty and forty-year-old PhD students are really just gossip-loving, angst-ridden high schoolers. Who like to talk about mise en abyme and indexicality.

3.) It is no longer permissible to have “glitter” or “Jack Daniels” themed parties. Mad Men dress-up parties and cat birthdays are, however, acceptable.

4.) Sneaky undergrads will come to your office hours and attempt, under the guise of needing help with a paper, to have you write it for them.  At which point you may guiltlessly convince them to give up on their topic and write about phenomificulumpificusousness in Camera Lucida.

5.) There is, apparently, a point at which oversized flannel stops being appropriate class-wear. And it is so, so sad.

Five or six more years to go. Whoaaaa baby.