25 Things You Learn In Grad School

1. Professors with PhDs and double degrees are like showbiz celebrities — when you grow up, you want to be just like them.

2. There will be many instances when you will look back at your undergrad years and instantly know what a big whiner you were: the tasks you were complaining about back then were super easy.

3. You thought that going to grad school was just like being a college student, and you will laugh at yourself for being so dead wrong.

4. You will realize that you are religious – when all else fails and you know you haven’t reviewed for an exam, you will find strength and courage through prayer.

5. If the professor says that you can use a calculator for the exam, be afraid. Be very afraid.

6. You’ll discover that you are such a talented person! You can eat, drive, read and do your assignment all at the same time.

7. Grades will not matter as much as the credibility of the professor and the quality of the course itself; you’d rather have a challenging class than be with an easy professor who gives easy grades.

8. You’ll learn that “poka yoke” is not a profane word! It’s Japanese, and it’s related to fool proofing… or something.

9. Receiving high grades does not necessarily mean that you learned a lot, and receiving low grades does not necessarily mean that you learned nothing.

10. You’ll swear to yourself that someday, when you will have the chance to teach, you will never give lessons while sitting in front of the class because it is annoying for the students — if the professor lazily teaches, the students will lazily learn.

11. Due to the tons of work to do, it will be inevitable to do them at the office, and there will be a point when you will ask yourself: “Am I a full-time employee and part-time MBA student? Or am I a full-time MBA student and part-time employee?”

12. You can never be thankful enough to the person who invented dark, rich coffee. You have found your new best friend, and her name is Caffeine.

13. You’ll start wondering what percentage of your class has a healthy, romantic relationship and start to feel self-conscious about your own (or lack thereof).

14. You will never eat or sleep on time.

15. You’ll look back at the past trimester and wonder how the heck you survived.

16. Huh? What do you mean 1:30 am is late? Are you joking about wanting to sleep and going home? We’re still doing the paper and finishing the report here, no one sleeps until this is finished!

17. If you had the chance to eat, you may want to use it to sleep instead — or better yet, finish the recommendation part of the case study.

18. You will feel smart.

19. You will feel dumb.

20. Wait, is it Monday AGAIN already? Whatever happened to the weekend? Oh, riiiiiight… case study.

21. Doubt is always around the corner: Will I pass? Will I fail? Oh screw it, I’ll just make up for it next time.

22. You will have a new definition of the word “stress.”

23. There will be a certain annoying classmate whom everybody talks and gossips about because, well, it’s just fun. And it’s a good way to distract yourselves from income statements and balance sheets for a while.

24. You will run out of post-it’s and the Starbucks Planner is just so darn small to plan out your schedule for the day!

25. Good news: there’s no such thing as a hell week in grad school! Bad news: there’s a hell trimester instead.