You're in grad school?!

Less than two years ago, while doing my undergrad, had you asked me if I wanted to go back to school after graduating, I would have said "HEILL NO!" (as in "hell" with two syllables). Where am I now today? One weeks into working towards eventually doing research in some numerical modelling thing doing some investigative in-situ testing, and experimental work, and data analysis, to complete a thesis on... whatever. 


Within this one weeks, I have learned grad school is actually quite amusing. Here are the distinct differences between undergraduate studies and grad studies that I have picked up on so far:

• Faculty actually like you.
• Faculty actually like you, so they give you stuff (free office, free locker, free printing privileges, building keypad access codes, keys to places... whoot!) 
• You don't go to school to socialize.
• You enjoy learning about the fundamentals of thermodynamics... the second time around. 
• In undergrad school, you're poor and your friends are poor. In grad school, your friends make mad cash, but you're still poor. 
• You don't ask the person next to you any questions.
• You don't ask anyone stupid questions. 
• Your classmates have full-time jobs, spouses, kids, a mortgage, and a lease on a car.
• No inter-departmental / inter-faculty rivalry. 
• You have to actually collaborate with other departments and disciplines. 
• By now you know printing slides for lectures is a waste of time, and toner (and paper I guess).
• You only have three lectures per week... 3 hours long each. 

I shall leave you here to ponder upon my first post, so I can go start on my fundamentals of thermodynamics. But before I do that, I'll leave you with a little flashback of my first-year physics tutorial from my undergrad years:

- Me: Ummm, I got negative entropy for the answer to this question.

- TA: Congratulations. You've just destroyed the universe. I hope you're happy.