07/4/08 PHD comic: 'Typical Spectrum of Grad Student Conversations'

Greg Bernhardt

Piled Higher & Deeper by Jorge Cham

More...

durt

What. No one reads People magazine.

kingdomof

Yeah, usually I hear things ranging from lab techniques, "my mentor's experiments are all wrong", to "Oh god, GTA just came out!"

Borek

It doesn't change much after you become overgrad.

BobG

The level of their beer mugs has barely lowered at all, yet they've gotten stupider already!

Astronuc

I suppose they just look at the pictures.

Anyone been to a doctor's/dentist's office lately - and had to wait for a prolonged period in a waiting room. Make sure you take a book.

Astronuc

Maybe it's a new beer, and they gulped off-frame. Or they sip their beer at that school.

Moonbear

People don't talk science in bars! Not even grad students. Sometimes we'd swap war stories ("Wow, that's a huge bruise on your arm, how did you get that?" "Um, do you REALLY want to know, or should I just tell you I have a boyfriend who beats me?"), but the whole point of going out was to escape the lab. Of course, we never had a clue what was going on in the real world either, so our conversations were truly bizarre at times, mostly about the sex we weren't getting. We made quite a lot of waitresses blush when they'd walk in during the wrong part of our conversation though.

turbo

People do talk science in bars if it's exciting enough. My qualitative analysis lab final was a bear, and my buddies used to rib me about it incessantly. We had a VERY finite sample and a 3-hour final to determine what was in our number-coded test tube. I was the last to finish, and when I handed in the test results, the only thing on the form was "water". The LA howled, and said so YOU'RE the turkey this semester! I was so intent about getting accepted for a 5-year Pulp and Paper scholarship that I obsessed and didn't seriously consider that the procedure for the QA final might have left me with a sample that was pure water.

Borek

I feel your pain, I have been to my dentist last Friday. Sigh... I had no idea earlier how many stupid magazines are published in Poland. In about five minutes I have read why my president is the perfect one, why he is the worst one, recipe for perfect sex in the morning, how to bake a cake in 30 minutes, what to do when I (?) have a painful period and what are the symptoms of low oil level in the engine. All in three phrases and using 500 words vocabulary, so that it can get swallowed by everyone.

After that I started to play Golf Tour on my mobile.

lisab

Ha...it's the same here, but with a generous dose of celebrity gossip. Part of the reason PF is such an oasis!

humanino

I have never heard any "people's chatting" at the lab. At least, not the other researchers I talk with. Politics sure enough. And yes, people can talk physics and mathematics over a beer in a bar. I've been more than once asked what the h*ll we're arguing about geemunu... Even in private parties, more than once I had to tell a few of my friends that either we continue in the kitchen, or we stop spoiling the conversation.

Truly passionate people won't mind talking about their passion even after love... while ?

humanino

I print review articles 2x2 pages per printer page, I cut and bind them so I can carry them around, just in emergency cases.
It turns out to be quite useful.

Mike H

Why read People magazine when you've got a gazillion celebrity blogs? Open up a web browser in the background of your computer window behind your data set and check out the latest scandal, paparazzi pictures, and bikini candids. :)

BobG

"the symptoms of low oil level in the engine": There's an additive you can pour directly into your engine that will relieve that.

How many symptoms can there be? The oil is below the "Add" line on the dipstick, your engine goes click-click-click-click-click as it's running, your car goes CLACK-CLACK-CLACK-CLACK-CLACK as it's running, and your car blows smoke and the engine won't run (from least severe to most severe). I'm not sure about the last symptom since I've only known one person to do that and I didn't know him when he did it (he bought a brand new car by time he was 18, but didn't know you needed to add oil once in a while - in fact, he never opened the hood the entire time he owned the car which was fairly briefly).

He never talked about physics in bars, either.

As for handling painful periods, I usually revert to exclamation marks! Is that more effective than resorting to question marks?

Moonbear

I recommend going to a bar. Kills the pain for both of you.

lisab

Ah yes, alcohol...it's both the solution, and the cause, of all our problems (Homer Simpson).