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The Top Ten Lies Told by Graduate Students
(taken from the Harvard Crimson)

10. It doesn't bother me at all that my college roommate is making $80,000 a year on Wall Street.

9. I'd be delighted to proofread your book/chapter/article.

8. My work has a lot of practical importance.

7. I would never date an undergraduate.

6. Your latest article was so inspiring.

5. I turned down a lot of great job offers to come here.

4. I just have one more book to read and then I'll start writing.

3. The department is giving me so much support.

2. My job prospects look really good.

1. No really, I'll be out of here in only two more years.

During a phone conversation, my nephew mentioned that he was taking a psychology course at the university. "Oh, great," I said, "Now you'll be analyzing everyone in the family."
"No, no," he replied. "I don't take abnormal psychology until next semester."

When I first started college, the Dean came in and said "Good Morning" to all of us. When we echoed back to him, he responded "Ah, you're Freshmen."

The professor says, "I want those guys back in the lab after lunch."

He explained. "When you walk in and say good morning, and they say good morning back, it's Freshmen. When they put their newspapers down and open their books, it's Sophomores. When they look up so they can see the instructor over the tops of the newspapers, it's juniors. When they put their feet up on the desks and keep reading, it's seniors."
" When you walk in and say good morning, and they write it down, it's graduate students."

Ask and ye shall receive
(to the tune of "If I only had a brain"):
If I only had a thesis
Then they wouldn't call me specious.
They would not reject my claim.
Do Do Doot Da Doot Da Dum
I would write it and defend it
I would leave and that would end it.
I'd be off to win my fame.

This letter was first written by a graduate student in Europe in 1954 and has traveled around the world at least 16 times. At first I wouldn't believe that it would work, but after trying it, I am now a believer in its mystical and magical power.

"go blind or break his or her back first...."
This letter was received by a graduate student in Chicago, IL in 1973 and within two weeks, he had completed a 5600 page doctoral dissertation and began a career which lead to a Nobel Prize. A few years later, another graduate student received this letter and sent it to 5 of her friends, and she too completed a 3100 page paper which is continues to grow to this day!
Simply write five pages of text on the given subjects for each person on this list. Then place your name in slot #1 and move everyone else's name down one space. Send this letter to ten of your colleagues, and within a month, you too will have a thesis or disertation which your advisor can choke on if he or she doesn't go blind or break his or her back first.

Bears and Bulls in the stock market, but what about Sox and Cubs?
The last person who received this letter and did not respond was tormented by receiving 100-level teaching assignments until he was 40 years old. Today he works as a clerk for the Little-Plastic-Pizza-Table Museum in Cleveland, OH, making minimum wage and regretting his terrible decision not to perpetuate this letter.

An MIT student spent an entire summer going to the Harvard football field every day wearing a black and white striped shirt, walking up and down the field for ten or fifteen minutes throwing birdseed all over the field, blowing a whistle and then walking off the field. At the end of the summer, it came time for the first Harvard home football game, the referee walked onto the field and blew the whistle, and the game had to be delayed for a half hour to wait for the birds to get off of the field. The guy wrote his thesis on this, and graduated.

Top Ten things that suck MORE than writing a psych thesis:
1. Getting hit by a truck
2. Being stranded in the Sahara without water
3. Falling in a pool of alligators
4. Discovering that your house was built on top of a graveyard
5. Hearing voices in your head
6. Being eaten by turtles
7. Getting a package from the Unabomber
8. Studying thermodyamic engineering
9. Writing a dissertation
And the number one thing that sucks more than writing a thesis:
10. Not graduating
So I guess I'll get back to work.

psychology student
A very shy guy goes into a bar and sees a beautiful woman sitting at
the bar. After an hour of gathering up his courage he finally goes
over to her and asks, tentatively, "Um, would you mind if I chatted
with you for a while?"

To which she responds by yelling, at the top of her lungs, "No, I
won't sleep with you tonight!"

Everyone in the bar is now staring at them. Naturally, the guy is
hopelessly and completely embarrassed and he slinks back to his table.
After a few minutes, the woman walks over to him and apologizes. She
smiles at him and says, "I'm sorry if I embarrassed you. You see, I'm
a graduate student in psychology and I'm studying how people respond
to embarrassing situations."

To which he responds, at the top of his lungs, "Two hundred dollars?!!"
How Mil Specs Live Forever

Graduate Admissions Committee
Department of Psychology
Big Deal University
Collegeville, USA
Dear Committee Members:
Thanks for your letter of March 30. After careful consideration, I regret to inform you that I am unable to accept your rejection at this time.
This year I have been particularly fortunate in receiving an unusually large number of rejection letters. With such a varied and promising field of schools, it is impossible for me to accept all refusals.
Despite your outstanding record and previous experience in rejecting applicants, I find that your rejection does not meet my current career needs. Consequently, I will begin taking classes as a graduate student in your department this August. I look forward to seeing you then.
Best of luck in rejecting future applicants.
Sincerely Yours,
[Name Withheld]

Deep Thought by Jack Handy:
Instead of studying for finals, what about just going to the Bahamas and catching some rays? Maybe you'll flunk, but you might have flunked anyway; that's my point.

The Professor's Wish
A grad student, a post-doc, and a professor are walking through a city park and they find an antique oil lamp. They rub it and a Genie comes out in a puff of smoke. The Genie says, "I usually only grant three wishes, so I'll give each of you just one." "Me first! Me first!" says the grad student. "I want to be in the Bahamas, driving a speedboat with a gorgeous woman who sunbathes topless." Poof! He's gone. "Me next! Me next!" says the post-doc. "I want to be in Hawaii, relaxing on the beach with a professional hula dancer on one side and a Mai Tai on the other." Poof! He's gone. "You're next," the Genie says to the professor.

You just might be a graduate student if...
...you spend more on books than on tuition.
...you actually hope your professor assigns homework.
...you get a 3-hour final with 5 questions or less.
...the words "free time" are unfamiliar to you.
...you spend Saturday morning waiting for the library to open.
...you've memorized your professors' home phone numbers.
...your professors know your home phone number.
...more than 25% of your textbook is "left as an exercise for the reader."
...you are on a first-name basis with everyone on the library staff.
...you can analyze the significance of appliances you cannot operate.
...your carrel is better decorated than your apartment.
...you have ever, as a folklore project, attempted to track the progress of your own joke across the Internet.
...you are startled to meet people who neither need nor want to read.
...you have ever brought a scholarly article to a bar.
...you rate coffee shops by the availability of outlets for your laptop.
...everything reminds you of something in your discipline.
...you have ever discussed academic matters at a sporting event.
...you have ever spent more than $50 on photocopying while researching a single paper.
...there is a microfilm reader in the library that you consider "yours."
...you actually have a preference between microfilm and microfiche.
...you can tell the time of day by looking at the traffic flow at the library.
...you look forward to summers because you're more productive without the distraction of classes.
...you regard ibuprofen as a vitamin.
...you consider all papers to be works in progress.
...professors don't really care when you turn in work anymore.
...you find the bibliographies of books more interesting than the actual text.
...you have given up trying to keep your books organized and are now just trying to keep them all in the same general area.
...you have accepted guilt as an inherent feature of relaxation.
...you reflexively start analyzing those greek letters before you realize that it's a sorority sweatshirt, not an equation.
...you find yourself explaining to children that you are in "20th grade".
...you start refering to stories like "Snow White et al."
...you frequently wonder how long you can live on pasta without getting scurvy.
...you look forward to taking some time off to do laundry.
...you have more photocopy cards than credit cards.
...you wonder if APA style allows you to cite talking to yourself as "personal communication".

You Know You're Out Of College When:
1. Your salary is less than your tuition.
2. Your potted plants stay alive.
3. Shacking in a twin-sized bed seems absurd.
4. You keep more food than beer in the fridge.
5. You have to pay your own credit card bill.
6. Mac & Cheese no longer counts as a well-balanced meal.
7. You haven't seen a soap opera in over a year.
8. 8:00 a.m. is not early.
9. You have to file for your own taxes.
10. You hear your favorite song on the elevator at work.
11. You're not carded anymore.
12. You carry an umbrella.
13. You learn that "Bachelor" is nicer term for a jackass.
14. "Extended childhood" only really pertains to your salary, which is a little less than your allowance used to be.
15. "Twenty-something" means over-qualified, under-paid and not married.
16. Your friends marry instead of hook-up and divorce instead of break-up.
17. You start watching the weather channel.
18. Jeans and baseball caps aren't staples in your wardrobe.
19. You can no longer take shots, and smoking gives you a sinus attack.
20. You go from 130 days of vacation time to 7.
21. You stop confusing 401K plan with 10K run.
22. You go to parties that the police don't raid.
23. Adults feel comfortable telling jokes about sex in front of you.
24. You don't know what time Wendy's closes anymore.
25. Your car insurance goes down.
26. You refer to college students as kids.
27. You drink wine, scotch and martinis instead of beer, bourbon, and rum.
28. Your parents start making casual remarks about grandchildren.
29. You feed your dog Science Diet instead of Taco Bell.

You Might Be a Grad Student If...

1. You can identify universities by their internet domains.
2. You are constantly looking for a thesis in novels.
3. You have difficulty reading anything that doesn't have footnotes.
4. You understand jokes about Foucoult.
5. The concept of free time scares you.
6. You consider caffeine to be a major food group.
7. You've ever brought books with you on vacation and actually studied.
8. Saturday nights spent studying no longer seem weird. ...the
professor doesn't show up to class and you discuss the readings anyway.
9. You've ever travelled across two state lines specifically to go to a
library.
10. You appreciate the fact that you get to choose *which* twenty hours
out of the day you have to work.
11. You still feel guilty about giving students low grades (you'll get
over it).
12. You can read course books and cook at the same time.
13. You schedule events for academic vacations so your friends can come.
14. You hope it snows during spring break so you can get more studying
in.
15. You've ever worn out a library card.
16. You find taking notes in a park relaxing.
17. You find yourself citing sources in conversation.
18. You've ever sent a personal letter with footnotes.

[Original title: "Pavlov's birds" - obviously not from a psycholgist]
An MIT student spent an entire summer going to the Harvard football field every day wearing a black and white striped shirt, walking up and down the field for ten or fifteen minutes throwing birdseed all over the field, blowing a whistle and then walking off the field. At the end of the summer, it came time for the first Harvard home football game, the referee walked onto the field and blew the whistle, and the game had to be delayed for a half hour to wait for the birds to get off of the field. The guy wrote his thesis on this, and graduated.

Top Five Lies Told by Teaching Fellows:
5. I'm not going to grant any extensions.
4. Call me any time. I'm always available.
3. It doesn't matter what I think; write what you believe.
2. Think of the midterm as a diagnostic tool.
1. My other section is much better prepared than you guys.

Why God never received a PhD:
1. He had only one major publication.
2. It was in Hebrew.
3. It had no references.
4. It wasn't published in a refereed journal.
5. Some even doubt he wrote it by himself.
6. It may be true that he created the world, but what has he done since then?
7. His cooperative efforts have been quite limited.
8. The scientific community has had a hard time replicating his results.
9. He never applied to the ethics board for permission to use human subjects.
10. When one experiment went awry he tried to cover it by drowning his subjects.
11. When subjects didn't behave as predicted, he deleted them from the sample.
12. He rarely came to class, just told students to read the book.
13. Some say he had his son teach the class.
14. He expelled his first two students for learning.
15. Although there were only 10 requirements, most of his students failed his tests.
16. His office hours were infrequent and usually held on a mountain top.
17. No record of working well with colleagues.