Montreal Days

The trials and tribulations of History PhD students:

• being in front of your class and suddenly realizing you have no idea how to pronounce one of the key words since you've never had to say it out loud before and then proceeding to pronounce it differently every time you say it
• generally feeling like a fool in front of your class and wondering why the university pays you for it
• finding the topics everyone else is studying more interesting than your own
• feeling everyone is smarter and better than you ('small fish in a big pond' syndrome)
• perfecting the art of pretending you've read a really boring 440 page book when, in fact, you've only read 30 pages
• binge eating (I know it's cold here but there is only so much winter fat one needs)
• doing anything to get out of working. For example, finding the red staple on your fellow TA's student's assignment fascinating and admiring it for a tad too long
• realizing that highlighting or copying copious amounts of text will ultimately not help on your comprehensive exams
• despairing every time you think about the 150+ texts left to read
• waiting for this year to be over so you can finally get on with the good stuff
• coping with the fact that what you're doing has no practical applications what so ever