Serves him right for having a doormat that says "Go Away"

I was taking my dog out back to do his business (which was apparently very urgent), and it seems the dog thought the downstairs neighbor's doormat felt like grass. Close enough.

Turning the Tables

Because I'm not teaching this year and therefore don't have stories about my students, here's a story about a TA:

Today at the beginning of my GIS class, I was saving the professor's Powerpoints to my thumb drive when the TA leaned over and said, "You should be paying attention."

She then fell asleep. When she woke up, she took a bunch of pills, and fell back to sleep.

In the last few minutes of class, she woke up and looked at my computer again to make sure I was paying attention.

At an Academic Party

Colleague 1: "What do you think of Prof. X's new girlfriend?"

Me: "She seems a little young."

Colleague 1: "I think that's his main requirement for girlfriends."

Later in the night....

Colleague 2: "Have you heard about Prof. X?"

Me: "Colleague 1 says his main criteria for girlfriends is that they're young."

Colleague 2: "He's really well known in his department for throwing big parties and inviting all the students. At the end of the night, it's just him and a bunch of college girls, doing cocaine."

More thoughts on the real life - grad life balance panel

Anyone who successfully balances real life and grad school responsibilities would say no to being on the panel and stay home playing with the puppy instead. Which is what I'm doing.

Another suggestion for maintaining a life-grad school balance:

The earlier you start drinking, the earlier you have to stop working (disregard if you work while drunk)

My 6-step plan for achieving life balance

I've just been asked to speak on a panel about balancing real life and grad school. The person arranging the panel said he can't think of anyone who does it better than me. Would he still think that if he knew I'm planning on leaving the program?

On the one hand, yes, I have maintained a healthy level of non-grad school activity in my life. On the other hand, I no longer plan to get my Ph.D. Maybe the reason I'm so successful at having outside interests is because I don't like political science enough to put more time into it.

I remember when I had to sit through this panel. One speaker stood up and said, "I had a baby, so that kind of forces me to maintain a balance." I thought, "Is that a suggestion?" And then I thought, "What a stupid panel." What could I say that would be less inane than everything I had to listen to?

Here's what I've got so far:

1. Study something you find really boring and finding outside interests will take care of itself.

2. Don't make friends with anyone in your program; become friends with people who aren't in grad school instead.

3. Once you have outside friendships, you'll quickly learn not to talk about grad school because none of your friends want to hear about it.

4. Once you're not allowed to talk about grad school, you'll start doing even more non-grad school stuff so that you have something to talk about with your friends.

5. Once you start doing more non grad school stuff, you'll realize that academia is a crazy fucked up place.

6. You'll also realize that a) there are so many interesting jobs in the non-academic world and b) they all pay better.

And then you'll probably do what I'm planning on doing.

Personal Motto

Some people think that if you're smart, you should do amazing things. I think that if you're smart, you should do mediocre things in half the time it takes other people to do them.