Graduate life

You laugh, but it's a serious issue that every postgraduate (particularly research postgraduates, who have three-plus years of what seems like unlimited unstructured time on their hands) must face. This week I bring you the continued results of my time-wasting by extending my fabulous list of top-10 ways to procrastinate.

Last week I touched on a big (and, I feel, under-discussed) issue in the lives of postgraduate students. As a sacrifice to you, dear readers, I am now going to air my dirty laundry and tell you about my favourite time-wasting activities. However, I must insert here a disclaimer- have you got an impending deadline? A paper due? A talk to write? Exams to study for? Marking to do? An actual job? If so, DO NOT read on. You have been warned!

If life were a carnival, then the role of the juggler would be played by graduates. Each of our juggling balls representing the many projects we manage, our theses, our jobs, our relationships ... projects moving from hand to hand in a balancing act that sees the neglect of one, or the unequal focus of another, send those balls bouncing to the dirt. For the juggler, those balls are kept in the air by constant movement. It’s the classic case of the juggling act. For this post we pause for just a second on one of those balls, for me, it’s a musical one.

On this blog, you are going to hear a lot of wonderful things about being a graduate student. I know I’ve already told you about the personal computer and the sandwich toaster, but there are many other fabulous perks that I and my fellow bloggers are sure to enlighten you on. So, in order to stymie any possible accusations of bias in the Graduate Life blog, I am going to inform you about some of the side effects that I have experienced in my efforts to get educated.