I knew what I was in for when I bought it. I’d mentioned it to a friend of mine, and he’d said the predictable things.
“What? A bike helmet? Man, I make fun of kids who wear bike helmets.”
It’s true. He does. So do I. Among undergrads trying to stay perfectly groomed and looking good while whizzing from class to class, bike helmets are anathema.
Only grad students wear bike helmets, the story goes, so anyone who wears a bike helmet must be a grad student—and thus an object of scorn. Helmets are the tip of an iceberg of lameness that includes every doctoral student hanging out at an undergrad party, every 28-year-old MBA candidate trying to pick up an 18-year-old sorority pledge, every Daily story about whiny grad students demanding housing subsidies.
That’s the story when you’re a Stanford undergrad, and I bought into it. I’d see a woman bike by with a helmet and headlight and feel a stab of pity for the poor folks caught as adults in a young students’ world. It was sad, really, to watch them feebly clinging to their youth with their Graduate Balls and Law School Socials. Some Siberian cultures, I’d heard, put their aged out on ice floes and set them adrift when they got too embarrassing for their much cooler offspring. The idea didn’t seem terribly inappropriate to me.
Then came last June, and graduation.
The slope was gentle but slippery. The economy was fading fast; it made sense to avoid the workforce. I could get my master’s degree in a year if I stayed at Stanford. A group of us found a great house a few miles off campus—so close I could bike and save gas money. Of course, I’d be riding down busy University Avenue every day; to be safe, I’d need a helmet. So I got one.
And suddenly, bizarrely, I was an official grad student.
At first, the prospect of grad student life didn’t seem so bad. The first day of fall quarter, I showed up on campus newly helmeted and immediately was spotted by a senior friend.
“Safety first!” he yelled at me sardonically.
“Grad Student Nation!” I cried, holding my fist in the air. If I was to be a grad student, I could make the best of it.
Or could I? It quickly became clear that the grad student world, which I had thought undifferentiated in its geekdom, was full of its own complexities and social hierarchies. It turned out I was at the bottom.
Spending a fifth year at Stanford, either to finish an undergrad degree or to get a master’s, is reasonably common. Last fall, 292 fifth-years enrolled, representing about one-sixth of the Class of 2001.
But despite their numbers, fifth-years live in a netherworld: no longer seniors, but hardly embraced as grad students. We don’t have pub nights; we don’t get graduate fellowships. For my program, an MS in symbolic systems, I worked on a project in the psychology department. I watched the PhD candidates there with envy. They have desks and offices. Professors know their names. They have their own theses to publish, their own research to lead.
Most of all, I watched the “real” grad students trundle off together to special doctoral seminars, to Law School forums, to Business School wine-and-cheese parties. They looked like they were having fun. The fifth year, I began to find, is the gateway drug of academia: you tell yourself that you’re in control, that you’re just doing it for fun, but all around you see people getting higher, and after a while, it doesn’t look too bad. . . .
I spent most of this year straddling the border of grad and undergrad. I’d charge down University Avenue each day, helmet shining, but it came off once I rolled into the Oval. I’d meet undergrad friends at their dorms for dinner, but I wouldn’t go to parties there. I’d read my Graduate Student Council newsletters, but only once each, and only in my room with the door closed.
And when I felt isolated, I could turn to my housemates, all of whom finished school in 2001. With six former freshmanRAs among us, we’ve been a fortress of craft projects and community building. We have a house name (The Executive Ranch of Ridiculousness), a computer cluster and towels monogrammed with the house initials. We pay a board bill and reimburse ourselves for supermarket runs. Hosting a faculty speaker series has been discussed. We’re collectively engaged in a sort of mid-youth crisis, a desperate attempt to relive our days as undergrads, only better the second time around.
As a senior, I would have thought that sort of thing was pathetic. Now, I know I couldn’t have survived my fifth year without it. And now, the year is over and I have to decide.
I’ve thought about getting a job and leaving school behind. Earning a salary doesn’t sound too bad, to me or my parents.
But I’m afraid it’s already too late. I’m hooked.
I’m planning to spend next year applying to PhD programs around the country. It’s time to admit what I’ve turned into. Grad Student Nation, here I come.
Jeff Cooper, ’01, MS ’02, is from Wellesley, Mass.
