The eight types of graduate student
Comments(0) Not my words but an article from The Guardian that I thought was pretty good. Like the author I think I am also probably no 6 with a touch of 2.
Why are we postgrads here? Well, for lots of reasons, says Patrick Tomlin
Tuesday May 15, 2007
The Guardian
When I started this column, I promised myself I wouldn’t let it become a
monthly whinge about how poor I am. Partly because that would be as boring
as if I stood in your garden and recited excerpts from my thesis, and partly
because, as graduate students go, I’m not too badly off.
But I have had to make financial sacrifices to pursue my studies. Given that
everyone else has presumably had to do so too, I initially figured that we
must all be there because of a pure thirst for knowledge. I’ve since
realised, however, that the impulses that draw someone to academic study
beyond graduation are a lot more varied than that.
While I’ve only been at it a short while, I am sufficiently aware of the
unwritten columnists’ code to know one is expected to make wild
generalisations, shun nuance, and present categories in a list format. So,
without further ado, I present the eight types of graduate student:
1. The Wannabe Undergraduate
They had such fun as undergraduates that they cannot bear it to end. They
prop up the bar, talking to undergrads about their thesis, rather than
actually writing it. They judge success by notches on the bedpost and
hangovers accrued instead of marks, grades and the intellectual respect of
their peers.
2. The Student Who Tried Employment
Some postgraduates have been out into the real world and had a real job,
with a desk and a computer and a pay cheque and a lunch break and a pension
and appraisals and meetings and everything. And, for whatever reason, they
have found it wanting.
3. The Couldn’t-Survive-Anywhere-but-at-University
The group most likely to be cultivating eccentricities – keeping a mouse in
their pocket or wearing socks with Marxist slogans sewn into them – while
still too young to shave.
4. The CV-Filler
Their primary focus is not what they study, but what it will look like on
their CV. They believe this qualification will give them “that extra edge”.
Most likely to end up as accountants or lawyers, never employing the
knowledge gained.
5. The Prestigious Scholarship Recipient
Rather than worrying about what the subject they study will look like on
their CV, their primary focus is who is paying for it. In a reversal of the
usual relationship between funding and studying, in which the former is a
means to the latter, the funding is regarded as an end in itself and the
studying something that has to be endured to be able to call themselves a
[insert name of dead white man] scholar for the rest of their lives.
6. The One Who Just Needs Answers
They really are motivated purely by the desire to find answers about their
specific area of interest.
7. The Eternal Student
They are not bothered whether their academic career shows linear progress,
they’re just collecting qualifications and trying to get every letter of the
alphabet after their name.
8. The Polymath
These geniuses could have studied anything, anywhere. They will probably go
on to great things across several disciplines, and already understand your
thesis better than you do. An unfortunate subset are also charming, witty
and good-looking, and therefore hated by everyone.
And which am I? I’d like to think No 6, but I suspect there’s more than a
touch of No 2 about me, too.
· Patrick Tomlin is researching a doctorate in political theory at Oxford
University. His column appears monthly
