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March 03, 2004
The prototypical grad student
You know that you have seen him. Mostly typified by a fashion sense developed and currently kept at about whenever this person graduated from high school. (Which nowadays is about 1995)
He walks rather slowly (because he is so old) and almost continually hangs his head (because his brain is too heavy or because he has been trying to figure out this intense lambda calculus equation for the past 3.7954 months. (That’s metric months not English months)) Consistently blinking and or pushing up his owlish pair of tortoise shell spectacles he mumbles about the aforementioned lambda calculus incoherently.
He has a beard (and he is one of those people who shouldn’t have one) and hair that hangs over his ears and the tops of his spectacles. He tries to part far on the left side of his head but it has the tendency to fall forward because he is looking at the ground so much.
He wears a members-only gray jacket with the mock-collar and all the snaps. This clashes nicely with the flannel shirt underneath and the black jeans that are now charcoal because of use.
Now you maybe thinking well this guy is just retro-early-mid-nineties style. But, no he just doesn’t make that cut. He doesn’t care now and hasn’t cared for almost a decade. To top is off he slings a messenger bag. And not the cool bags made fashionable by the gap and Nathan Meyer. His bag is loaded so much so that the seams are splitting and there are coffee stains all over it.
But to his credit the grad student is bettering society. He will soon be a professor to pass on the absurd amount of useless knowledge that he has assembled. So thank you grad student and man, lay off the Asian food it makes your clothes stink.
(p.s. I love Asians and Asian food (and I love grad students (especially Tony Hill)))
Posted by paul at March 3, 2004 10:22 AM
Comments
wow. where did that come from?
Posted by: Matt at March 3, 2004 11:45 AM
I guess that I am an admitted people watcher and have been observing said grad-type people for some time now and descided to lump them together in this quaint vision.
Posted by: paul at March 3, 2004 12:45 PM
Great Blog Paul!! : )
Posted by: micah at March 3, 2004 04:29 PM
Man, you really describe Cliff to a "T." I am also a big fan of the parenthetical statements within parenthetical statements within....
Posted by: Pat at March 3, 2004 04:55 PM
...a comment from micah is always a sweet aroma... many thanks :BEER:
Posted by: paul at March 3, 2004 05:58 PM
Paul, I think you should take up writing.
Maybe even science fiction.
Thanks for the comment on my site. I might even quote you as a "historian" in a chapter heading.
Posted by: Kathy at March 3, 2004 07:51 PM
This reminds me of my Chemistry 177 TA as a freshman at ISU. He was from Russia, and spent a lot of time in recitation telling us how Russian students were far superior to American students. He only owned plaid pants (maybe about three different pairs) and wore them with t-shirts or occaisonally button-down shirts that horribly clashed. I have to assume that most people from Russia have better fashion sense than this, so I attribute his poor dress on spending too much time in a Chem lab, I guess.
Posted by: Kirsten at March 4, 2004 07:00 PM
Ah hem.....Please visit 4th floor of Town Engineering and observe. As I have previously stated in the past, construction engineers are a superior breed of students. All of my collegues where chakis and a dress shirt, or suit and tie and are very social with other construction engineers. Thank you very much!
P.S. Does this thing have spell check?
Posted by: Cliff at March 5, 2004 11:29 AM
yeah, spell check because what are chaki's? :)
Posted by: paul at March 5, 2004 11:53 AM
I think they're like chinos and khakis.. maybe
Posted by: mike at March 5, 2004 01:49 PM
Posted by: Tony at March 5, 2004 02:34 PM
Hey, Paul. I'm back at your blog. Keep writing. I want to put list you on my site if that's okay.
Posted by: Kathy at March 5, 2004 04:57 PM