Student or Professional?

By Kelly Hanson. One of the best pieces of advice I ever received about graduate school came during my last semester of coursework. The professor, while talking more broadly about academia, said off handedly, “You’re more than just a graduate student, you know.” And it was so simple. So obvious. I already knew it. Except I didn't really know it. In that moment, I had the ultimate grad school epiphany. Work was not some constant thing that life occasionally interrupted; dinner was not a break from work; sleep was not a break from work; going out with friends was not a lack of productivity; and catching up on a TV show was not simply a reward for having worked all day. Life doesn’t interrupt work; work interrupts life. As David Harvey has so eloquently noted, academic labor can permeate the entire day, and in contemporary academic professions, there is often no clear line between personal time and work time. Read more...