Today was my first day of grad school (orientation). What was it like? Imagine a lanky, stubbled, Englishman declaiming the following:

Here’s the difference between your undergrad studies and what you are about to embark on for your PhD. Undergrad is like being in a hurdles race. It’s 4 years, you know how many hurdles you have to jump over and how high they are, and the goal is to clear them as quickly and as well as you can, while knocking down as few as possible.

Grad school is more like a one-way plane ticket to a Transylvanian castle, and when you get inside the doors shut behind you and you’re left in total darkness holding onto nothing but a single matchbook. You light the first match and discover that you are in a room full of objects covered by white sheets. Before the light from your match goes out you have time to uncover only one object. If you’re lucky, before you run out of matches you’ll uncover a sheet that has another box of matches under it. If you’re really lucky eventually you’ll find the key to the door so you can get out of the damn place.

…to which a fellow grad student responded, can’t we just set fire to all the sheets?