Must Haves

Parker had three things that made the chaos of graduate school bearable: warm and comfortable pajamas, a hat appropriate for either good OR bad hair days, and a magical coffee cup. Okay, it wasn't magical, but when it was full of coffee it was. So shut up.

Trash

Rory loved doing spring cleaning. Everything felt better after that. There was no way Rory was cleaning out the garbage can, though. That was gross. That would wait for fall cleaning. Or checking out of the apartment cleaning. Or roommate's turn to do the cleaning cleaning.

Rory didn't throw away any old assignments, though. Those would all come in handy when the program was over and the full time job had started. Rory would refer back to these exams and papers to inform the work done in the future. 

Silly, naive Rory. You keep those papers, my friend. And you move them around the country for the next ten years. THEN and ONLY THEN will you have made your peace and be able to recycle those papers. Trust me. It's the way things are.

Dream

Rory didn't understand when people said they were "living the dream." "The dream" had yet to be defined for Rory. Rory thought that was the point of graduate school - to figure part of that out.

That said... Rory did sometimes dream of quitting school and becoming a cheese monger. Because Rory liked cheese. And the word "monger."

Communication

There are so many ways to communicate and those ways change all the time. It is important to surround yourself with people who will help you stay current with new and emerging ways of communicating. Here is a story about that...

Rory thought there was so much to learn from one of the professors this semester. Now - that seemed less likely. It made Rory very sad.

The other day Rory and a group of students were meeting with this professor.  One of the students from Rory's research group was running late, so the group told the prof that the late person was "OTW." Then someone said, "Um... you know what that means, right, Professor? OTW?"

The professor paused and said, "Yes. I know." (It was clear this was a stalling tactic because the professor did in fact NOT know.) "It means...  Outta This World," the professor finished hopefully. 

The entire group of students looked at the floor sadly and shook their heads. Then the professor said, "Wait! It means "On The Way!!" Right?!"

They smiled and congratulated their teacher for figuring it out. Deep down though they were still pretty sad that the professor hadn't known. And probably also even more sad that the faculty member cheated in their guess and used the word "outta." 

Get over it, students. If you haven't figured it out yet, there is a TON of stuff your faculty don't know and lots of times they have no idea what they're talking about!