New grad student drinking game

Ah, springtime. The weather is getting warmer, the days are getting longer, more and more open toes among the lab benches...and the pitter-patter of perspective graduate students on interviews echo through the hallways.

(N.B. I am not a grad student, I'm a technician and thus think myself vastly superior to anyone that dares enter my domain.)

There is something oddly comforting when grad student interviews come around. Maybe because it's a mark of the passage of time, a subtle reminder of our own mortality, a pang of nostalgia for those new beginnings. But mostly it's just amusing. New graduate students are like middle schoolers, and is there anything more awkward than witnessing a 13 year old's transition through puberty? Answer: it is matched only by watching naive 22 and 23 year olds fresh from college with a shiny biology degree transition into the cold, hard, alternate reality that is graduate school.

To make the most of this, I've devised a drinking game. It is always best to capitalize on other people's distress for one's own amusement. For legal (or practical) reasons, I will go on the official record and recommend that we start off this game in the morning playing with coffee, and maybe in the afternoon we'll switch to something harder. Remember--you can never be too caffeinated or too judgmental. Tech life forever.

The let's-make-fun-of-new-grad-students drinking game.


Take one (1) sip for every time you see:

• Navy coat and khaki pant combination. (What, does your mother still pick our your clothes or something?)
• Any ill-fitting suit on a guy. (Extra sips for a tie who's last appearance was probably at a grandparent's funeral)
• Non-lab appropriate footwear on women. (Add Bailey's to your coffee and drink if later in the afternoon she's hobbling barefoot and holding her shoes.)
• Combination of well-dressed prospective grad student being led around by a seasoned veteran in shorts and a t-shirt. (Extra sip if it's a PI, and they are wearing jeans.)
• Face frozen in perpetual smile of interest and understanding. (Oh, frozen face. We feel your pain. Except we don't.)
• The blind leading the blind. Drink every time you see a PI walking someone to their next interview...and getting lost and walking back by you.
• A pack of three or more, and only one is talking, and the rest are awkwardly following along. 

Got any other ones to add? Let me know!

And trust me, I don't usually judge people solely on the way they look. Only on Fridays. I'm sure once I get to know all of the new graduate students I will stand corrected and find that they are even more incompetent than I could have ever imagined. 

Cheers!