Surviving Your Stupid, Stupid Decision to Go to Grad School

Adam Ruben

Eph 2010 · Kuthengiswe ngu-Crown

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This is a book for dedicated academics who consider spending years masochistically overworked and underappreciated as a laudable goal. They lead the lives of the impoverished, grade the exams of whiny undergrads, and spend lonely nights in the library or laboratory pursuing a transcendent truth that only six or seven people will ever care about. These suffering, unshaven sad sacks are grad students, and their salvation has arrived in this witty look at the low points of grad school.

Inside, you’ll find:
 
  • advice on maintaining a veneer of productivity in front of your advisor
  • tips for sleeping upright during boring seminars
  • a description of how to find which departmental events have the best unguarded free food
  • how you can convincingly fudge data and feign progress
 
This hilarious guide to surviving and thriving as the lowliest of life-forms—the grad student—will elaborate on all of these issues and more.

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ADAM RUBEN spent seven years at Johns Hopkins University earning his Ph.D. in Molecular Biology. While there, he parlayed his healthy disdain for academia into a stand-up comedy act, which he has performed at clubs, colleges, and private functions from Boston to San Diego, recently opening for Dane Cook's Tourgasm at the Warner Theater in Washington, D.C. and earning second place in the Funniest Jewish Comic Contest at the Laugh Factory in Times Square.  For five years, Adam has taught an undergraduate stand-up comedy class that has quickly become one of the most popular January "Intersession" courses at Johns Hopkins University and culminates in a final show open to all students. He's written humor pieces for The National Lampoon and appears weekly on Food Detectives with Ted Allen.