I’ve heard of graduate students referred to as “zombies,” as being a shell of a former student merely shambling from lab to classroom. Until 2 weeks ago, I never really believed that. Two weeks ago, I hit a very busy time with my school work. On Thursday, I had a rather involved project due, and then yesterday (Tuesday), I had my a mid-term. This was no ordinary mid-term, this was my first test as a graduate student.

For 3 straight days, I studied and crunched the material in the library and at Starbucks. I pushed every bit of knowledge that was covered and even some that wasn’t. In just over an hour of taking the test, I felt as if I had wasted the entire time studying. I completely missed the mark on what I expected to see on the test and my grade will likely suffer. But from what I can ascertain from my professor (I don’t have an adviser yet) and from other students, grades have a much smaller impact in the education process.

Graduate school is no cake walk. It requires a serious time investment. I used to laugh when I heard people say that undergraduate school required 3 hours of work for every 1 hour of class; it was almost always untrue. In graduate school, it is very true and usually not enough time (more like 6:1). Imagine the toughest class you’ve ever taken. Imagine that that course is taught in half the time and is twice as hard. That is what my Advanced Operating Systems course feels like.

I found out that I will eventually have to take the qualification exams if I plan on rolling into a PhD. So basically, I am enrolled as a masters student, but I am working as if I am a PhD. I need to speak with an adviser to see if I can obtain an actual MS-in-passing that I can walk away with if I decide not to continue my education. Maybe then I can be classified as a PhD student and receive all the nice benefits that come with that (read: funding, aka free money).