Yes, I do Frequently Feel like a Loser

For the record, it happens to me more times than I’d like.  It’s always the same pattern- you think things are going well, you’ve got a handle on your shit, and Life decides to throw you a damn curveball.  I really feel like I’m one of Life’s guinea pigs in this hugely comical social experiment- except he didn’t really let me in on the joke.  But it’s ok because fortunately I caught on PRETTY quickly. What can I say?  I detect patterns and trends.  (Can we say engineer?)

I don’t know if you are familiar with engineering graduate school funding policies, but let me break it down for you so you can appreciate the awkwardness of the situation.  All the really motivated smart kids with good grades come into grad school funded by some foundation, or scholarship, or research group, or some private donor who secretly but not so secretly thinks that this student is brilliant enough to discover the solution to one of the worlds billion problems (and this donor can then reap the profits from it and name a building at the school after himself and die happy).  The second tier, the ‘other’ smart kids, are the somewhat lazier ones, because they either didn’t get 4.0′s, or they just didn’t get around to applying for fellowships/scholarships before they got to grad school.  But never fear because the professors can smell smartness from 54.56 yards (yes that is the exact distance) away and always need people to further their research interests- and then to keep the students happy they throw them some funding.   Boom- problem solved.  Next there are the really smart people who don’t qualify for most scholarships and fellowships because they’re the international students.  I have decided that all international students are geniuses, will probably cure cancer, aids, and climate change, and are in a category of their own.   Professors grab them for research real quick (for obvious reasons).  Finally, the bottom of the grad school chain are the people who want to get in and get out as fast as possible because they hate school but they either couldn’t get a job, or the workplace kind of requires you to have a Masters degree.  These students usually get funding by either being teaching assistants, or grading papers.  Basically they’re the teaching bitches.  Nobody wants to be the teaching bitch.  They don’t get respect.

So today, when I was talking with my professor about my research, what I wanted to do, and possible PhD topics, her first obvious question was…who was I funded by?  She probably thought I didn’t understand the question, because when I just kept staring at her blankly, she started naming off all the names of the professors in my department.  Finally, when I got around to opening my mouth, I told her that I wasn’t EXACTLY funded by anyone, and I wasn’t EXACTLY doing research for anyone either.  She paused, opened her eyes a little wider, and asked if I was the one who was teaching the general education programming class (i.e. YOU are the one who isn’t one of the academic cool kids??)  I  tried to salvage the situation by talking about how much I liked teaching and how much fun it was, but I think that threw her off because she looked genuinely shocked (probably wondering WHY I like doing bitch work), which was then followed by a long awkward pause.  By this time, she was exuding the “Oh my God I’m talking to a Loser” vibes.  When your professor practically has  ”Oh my God I’m talking to a Loser” etched across her face, it’s something you don’t forget easily.  Needless to say, I felt like a complete loser.

So  I am the loser of the graduate school universe, not part of the academic cool kids, and probably will never get free money for doing research.  But I think I’m ok with that because everything is a trade off.  Since I am not part of the academic cool kids, I get to do whatever the hell research I want to do without having to deal with donors or bull shit bureaucracy.  Since I am the academic bitch, I get to mold the minds of the young.  Which means I get to teach programming the way I want to teach it (if you’ve ever seen the Godfather or CSI I can teach you recursion in 10 minutes flat). And since I am the academic bitch, I can have fun with my research and my job without people breathing down my back.

So in conclusion, you can make all the loser faces you want to because this academic loser is her own boss.  Bitch.

I’m down with that.