Mad Skillz

There are days, man, there are days when I yearn (YEARN!) for an 8 to 5 job. Days when the sheer enormity of my dissertation comes crushing down on me like a pile of bricks, days when the project seems so profoundly undoable, days when I want nothing more than the ability to go to work and not care about my job. What's that? You say that those types of jobs only pay $25,000 a year? Sign me up, yo, 'cause that would be a pay RAISE. And then, once these thoughts are firmly entrenched, I remind myself that I had such a job. And I hated every second of it, felt myself getting stupider while I had it, and resented the jackasses charming people for whom I toiled. It also helps if I remember the time that one of my bosses walked all the way across the office, straight past the photocopier, to demand that I photocopy one single-sided page for her. Or the time that my manager, while wearing orthopedic shoes, criticized my own footwear. Or the time that another one of my bosses instructed me never to open her mail, then later demanded to know why I hadn't opened her mail. Inevitably, after I've reminded myself of this, I sigh and remember why I went to graduate school in the first place.