Foreword
 
 
There exists a subculture of dedicated academics who view spending a decade masochistically overworked and underappreciated as a laudable goal. They lead the lives of the impoverished, grade the exams of the whiny, and spend lonely nights in the library or laboratory pursuing a glowing truth that only six or seven people will ever care about. These people are grad students, and they are idiots.
 
This book is for readers considering or already committed to spending the best years of their lives without sunlight. You’ll learn which departmental events have the best free food, what pranks to play on hot-but-vapid undergrads, how to convincingly fudge data, and why your friends who opted to take faceless nine-to-five jobs after college were actually the smart ones.

Preface
 
 
Seriously?  A foreword and a preface?
 
Indeed.  The existence of both sections can teach you a lot about grad school:
 
1.      Much can be gained by stretching a small amount of content over multiple pages.
2.      In general, such redundancy imparts powerful messages that are powerful.
3.      Your reaction reveals whether you should be a grad student:
a.       Those unfit for grad school have skipped ahead, probably to a page with an illustration.
b.      Those who belong in grad school feel a compulsion to read every word (and, in some cases, take notes to prepare an extensive critique on the book’s use of dialectic assonance).

Prologue
 
 
All right, now this is jus...