Q: I think my preceptor is kind of cute. Do I have a chance? Do grad students ever date undergrads?
A: So you want to date a grad student? What was it that first attracted you? The high future earnings potential? The impeccable dress and grooming? The prospect of fascinating conversations about their esoteric dissertation?
Anyone want to take bets on whether this question was actually written by an undergrad?
Sarcasm aside, I am emphatically in favor of dating between grad students and undergrads. It may be the only thing that can save us from a far greater threat: Grad students dating each other.
A little background on the dating scene in Princeton: It sucks. Everyone in this town is old, rich or some combination thereof. This leaves few options for a broke 20-something who wants to maintain some dignity.
Most of us enter married, maintain monastic celibacy or date other grad students. Believe it or not, the third option is usually the worst. Grad school is a small place where nothing interesting happens, so even vaguely juicy gossip travels fast. Approximately 17 seconds after two grad students hook up, all of their officemates, most of their mates and a significant proportion of the administrative and custodial staffs know about it. (The professors don't care.) If one of those incestuous intra-departmental relationships goes bad, you'll be seeing each other constantly for the rest of your time here and infrequently for the rest of your lives. Plus, one of you will probably have to stop going to the D-Bar - and that just ain't worth it.
Not that relationships between grad students and undergrads are sans drama. Keep in mind that the grad student's friends will probably make endless fun of him or her. Your friends will, I imagine, make endless fun of you. There's a decent chance we'll assume you're scamming a grade or trying to get help on your junior paper. And face it, it just feels kind of skeezy.
But if you're still interested, send your grad student an e-mail. He or she might find the prospect of dating the next big Teach For America volunteer enticing. At least if it goes badly, we won't have to run into you at academic conferences for the rest of our lives.
Do wait until the grad student in question is no longer your preceptor. That's a little too sketchy for even me to endorse.
Q: You seem bitter, Anonymous Grad Student. Is everything OK?
A: There's really little reason for grad students to be bitter. We get to choose what we work on. For the most part, we get to choose when and where we work. We don't have bosses, we don't have to wear suits, and if we want to knock off on a beautiful day and go for a run, we can.
Of course, there's a flip side to all freedom. We work in isolation. We receive very little direction and have to be almost entirely self-motivated. There are very few people who we can talk about our work with, and most of them are also neurotic grad students. We face a very uncertain job market and constant doubts about the worth of our life's work.
Grad school can be rough on students' mental health. A 2004 survey at UC Berkeley found that nearly half of the university's grad students had "experienced an emotional or stress-related problem that significantly affected their well being and/or academic performance," and 10 percent had seriously considered suicide. And these grad students live in Berkeley, Calif., where I'm told the sun always shines and the hippies are always willing to share their favorite non-prescription antidepressants. Insert your favorite dig about living in central Jersey here and compare the two.
(As a side note, my favorite grad student joke goes something like this: An eighth-year grad student gets an e-mail from his adviser telling him that his latest dissertation chapter is crap and that he should really reconsider what he's doing in the program. Devastated, the grad student throws himself through his office window to the street below and is horribly injured.
There are two reactions to this story. The normal person's reaction is that it's clearly tragic, universities should spend more on mental health services, etc. The grad student reaction is that it's clearly fictional since grad students' offices don't have windows.)
So, yeah, being a grad student can be a bit of a downer. Maybe that's where the bitterness comes from.
Or maybe it comes from the fact that it's been, let's just say, something of a dry spell for me lately. Ex-preceptees, call me!
"Ask a Grad Student" is written by a Ph.D. student. His name is withheld because, well, it should be pretty obvious from this week's column.
Have a question about grad student life? E-mail street@dailyprincetonian.com
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