You Just Might Be a Graduate Student If...

• 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 started 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 referring 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 whether APA style allows you to cite talking to yourself as "personal communication."

A brief guide to literature

• It has been long known = I haven't bothered to check the references.
• It is known = I believe.
• It is believed = I think.
• It is generally believed = My collegues and I think.
• There has been some discussion = Nobody agrees with me.
• It can be shown = Take my word for it.
• It is proven = It agrees with something mathematical.
• Of great theoretical importance = I find it interesting.
• Of great practical importance = This justifies my employment.
• Of great historical importance = This ought to make me famous.
• Some samples were chosen for study = The others didn't make sense.
• Typical results are shown = The best results are shown.
• Correct within order of magnitude = Wrong.
• The values were obtained empirically = The values were obtained by accident.
• The results are inconclusive = The results seem to disprove my hypothesis.
• Additional work is required = Someone else can work out the details.
• It might be argued that = I have a good answer to this objection.
• The investigations proved rewarding = My grant has been renewed.
• Thanks to Joe Blow for expert technical assistance and Jane Doe for valuable discussion = Thanks to Joe Blow for doing all the work and Jane Doe for telling me what it meant.
• While it has not been possible to provide definite answers to these questions = The experiments didn't work out, but I figured I could at least get a publication out of it.
• Presumably at longer times = I didn't take the time to find out.
• The agreement with the predicted curve is...
  • excellent = fair.
  • good = poor.
  • satisfactory = doubtful.
  • fair = imaginary.
  • as good as could be expected = non-existent.
• The most reliable values are those of Jones = Jones was a student of mine.
• It is suggested that/It is believed that/It may be that = I think that.
• It is generally believed that = A couple of other guys think so too.
• It is clear that much additional work will be required before a complete understanding = I don't understand it.
• Unfortunately, a quantitative theory to account for these effects has not been formulated = Neither does anybody else.
• It is hoped that this work will stimulate further work in the field = This paper isn't very good, but neither are any of the others in this miserable subject.