Phones

If you see your faculty members texting or on their phones in class, they are probably looking up great pedagogical techniques to enhance your learning experiences. That or they are playing Words With Friends.

(pause)

To enhance their vocabulary to make their teaching even more powerful and transformative.

You.

As you perhaps prepare to travel to see family or friends this week, something for you to keep in mind...  It's not that people don't care about what you're studying in graduate school. No, more likely it's that they don't understand it. Or at least they don't understand why you are studying it. 

If people act the same way about your veganism, well it is simply because we  don't carrot what you eat. 

Robot

Rory went to their professor to ask for some ideas for their team's final project. The team just hadn't been able to come up with much and they were looking for ideas. When the professor brought out a robot that students from a previous class had built, Rory was shocked. "They developed this robot to provide career guidance, academic support, and personal motivation to students. It was their final project. I gave them a B+ on it because while the robot was successful in those areas, the team had failed to program it to help students with wellness, ethics, or leadership." 

Rory knew their team needed to really, REALLY get to work on something brilliant to have any hope of getting an A in this course.

Later that day the professor took their colleague out for lunch. The colleague had put on the old robot Halloween costume for the meeting with Rory. Every year it worked - the robot project really inspired students to invest a lot of time and energy into the assignment and to come up with some pretty creative things.

Work

You might think of your papers and presentations as the fruit of your labor. We all know you work hard enough and stress enough and have enough things to manage that you deserve to celebrate the work you have done. And I don't know what kind of fruit you want to represent your labor. Sometimes probably grapes (of wrath), some tasks will leave a sour taste in your mouth like lemons. Some things replenish you like water(melon) and other tasks might be the last straw(berry).

Also, this is not a great post. The point is that hard work is hard.