My grad school experience, in a nutshell.

So I was cleaning out my email and I came across one I wrote to a friend who was abroad back in January. I would like to reproduce an excerpt from it, because I'm pretty sure it's the absolute best representative of my experience in grad school that I could ever come up with.

Without further ado, I present to you the hell that is my life. All names have been removed because despite all the evidence to the contrary, I do try to remain a decent person.

Uh, so school. I have this group project for my regional planning glass and it is the worst. The project itself is kind of bad, we have to analyze a local community and try to figure out a project they could do to improve the town, and how we as planners could help, specifically through the use of finance tools. Blegh. As if that wasn't bad enough, the only reason I'm allowed to be in the class via my department is provided I keep it preservation focused. So I'm like, okay, we can do this. They have a historic district. Cool.

Too bad I got stuck with THE MOST AGGRAVATING GROUP MEMBERS EVER.

So first, there's (guy I will refer to as Beardy). He's the only one of us three who is actually a planning major so theoretically he should be helpful right? Nope. He's a total douche. He's one of those who's a TA in the department and thinks he's the shit, and feels the need to contribute comments constantly in class that are usually not relevant but remind us all that he's been there forever. 

Then, there's (girl I will refer to as Blondie). She talks like the blue monstar from Space Jam, no joke. She's a sustainable development major, kind of (by kind of I mean she's an Appalachian Studies major, which I think makes my top 5 list of most useless majors ever) which should work just fine with historic preservation, but not if you're a dick like Blondie. She has this really frustrating, irrevocable obsession with greenways and has made this clear from day one. For example, a conversation with her would go something like this:

Me: So I was thinking that Beardy and I have similar interests with commercial development, and maybe we could work with that.
Blondie: Right but they're working on this Greenway.
*5 minutes later*
Me: Yeah I know there are tax credits available for revitalizing factories and mills...
Blondie: Right there's this incentive for Greenways...
etc.

So guess what our project is about.

 

I seriously sat down with them during the last meeting (which btw I missed the first one cause they didn't tell me about it) and said guys, look, I don't wanna be a dick but I NEED this project to relate to preservation for me to get credit for this class. And they were like, oh, yeah totally, and told me all the ways that it related.

 

So our first assignment was due today, which I wrote up, and I tried to combine interest in a freaking greenway with preservation. And Blondie commented ALL over it like "Oh maybe I misunderstood the project but I thought we were focusing on the greenway". And so I'm like, cool, guess so, fuck me, it's fine. At least she provided feedback.. I tried to ask Beardy if we needed to include other things and he either wouldn't answer me or didn't seem to care. The other grad students' paper was 8 pages. Ours was 2.

This is my life right now.

 

Luckily I won't fail the class cause we also have an independent research project and mine is actually relevant to my life, so that's good. But seriously, fuck this shit.

 

Super fun times, yeah? My friend, upon responding to this mess, said, "I can't believe that these things happen to you, and sadly I feel like it is always happening." Which is exactly right. I am a magnet for stupidity and frustration. Either that, or my snark simply exacerbates the problem.

 

At least it makes for good entertainment, right?