cookies for everyone

Sometimes (like at my optometrist's today) when I tell people I'm doing my Ph.D., year 7 of 9 in my gluttonously excessive post-secondary academic career. their response is some admixture of pity, sympathy, and hopefulness. Like "Oh, that's too bad, but at least you're almost done." I'm always happy to correct them with assurances that I love being a grad student. It's a bit stressful at times due to its highly self-guided nature, and I have occasional doubts about my aptitude for it, but most of the time it's pretty great. And there are certain little things that remind me of how great it really is.

For instance, I have a row of magazine boxes above my desk containing old papers; they had various journal names and years on the fronts so I re-labeled them with nonsensical things: "Gremlin-related materials", "Secret Documents", "Items pertaining to the moon", and my personal favourite, "Enemies Lists". Somehow I find the notion of having multiple enemies lists to be very hilarious.

A recent incident really highlighted the awesomeness of grad school though. Every Tuesday at 2:40 pm we have a little coffee and snack get-together in the faculty lounge. The first week of every month we have cake to celebrate birthdays, and the rest of the time it's just cookies. Now, the big controversy in the department was the fact that the grad students would eat all of the cookies before anyone else got there. To rectify this, the graduate director offered to give $20 to teams of two people who would sign up to be in charge of cookies for that week, going to the grocery store and purchasing extra cookies for the department. So today along with our usual assortment of cookies we had tiny cinnamon buns and two-bite brownies.

If a shortage of cookies is the worst crisis my workplace has to deal with, I think I'm going to be okay.