Monday, February 25, 2008

Heart Lifting Promises

Hello:

I have someone's lunch which includes two bananas, a bottle of non
drowsy daytime relief medicine, two Nature Vally oats and honey bars and a book entitled: Heart Lifting Promises. Please claim.

Pat

The main secretary for our department sent out the above email to all chemistry graduate students. She is always sending out short and silly emails about lost items. This leads me to the two truths of the day:

1) grad school is crappy most of the time
and
2) being a secretary is a dumb job.

1) Grad school is crappy most of the time. This is illustrated by the contents of the lunch. Bananas and granola bars are two food items that are cheap and easy to grab. Notice how there are 2 each. This is because the owner knows that he/she will still be hungry after one banana and one granola bar. Obviously the lunch is missing the main course: A sandwich. But that is because a sandwich takes money for meat and time to make. And grad students don't have money or time. No time means no sleep, and you get the non-drowsy daytime meds. And finally Heart Lifting Promises, a book that only gets read by someone who thinks they need their heart lifted. Maybe that someone is horribly depressed because their experiment isn't working, or because their boss found a new way to screw them over. The email made me sad when I read it because obviously someone was having a hard time.

But for me, currently, Grad School is going very well. My boss is out of town, and my EXPERIMENT IS WORKING!!! On my first try no less!!! I think I was even more surprised than I was happy. On a side note, I am working on a proposal for my Oral Exam and I am trying to propose something that I think will work... It is intellectually challenging but doable and I feel well fitted for the job, which brings me to the second truth of the day:

2) Being a secretary is a dumb job. When things aren't going well, I often wish I had an easier, less-stressful job. But when I think about Pat sending out countless emails because she doesn't have anything else to do, I am thankful for my intellectual job.

*disclaimer* for people in graduate programs outside of the basic sciences, many of my comments may not apply.

3 comments:

Rikki said...

Those are good details. The granola bar thing was especially sad.

Congrats on your experiment.

Peacebone said...

Hehe. I would need my heart lifted if I had that as my lunch. Lean Pockets 4 life.

Novella said...

Hahaha, I just googled "Heart Lifting Promises." Some girl's myspace blog pops up with some inspirational quotes. Depressing :/