During my time here at LargeU, I've had the...ummm...opportunity to meet all kinds of graduate students. None irritate me more than those that feel that they are entitled to a Ph.D. And I'm not going to go off on a "a Ph.D. is a privilege" or any crap like that.
I just think that a Ph.D. requires a lot of hard work. For the sciences, this hard work roughly translates into slave labor as you balance 70+ hours a week in the lab and often coursework and often TAing. Grad school is not for the feint of heart. Grad school is not for everyone.
So I get really irritated when I hear / talk to / see Facebook references (yeah, yeah, I know) to fellow graduate students (that openly do NOT spend even 40 hours a week in lab OR have to take classes anymore OR TA) bitching about how they can't wait to get past this horrible thing called graduate school and out into the real world where they have no BS to deal with or hoops to jump through. These types of people are not working hard and merely using up grant money for their RAs (now at least they are conserving money by not spending it on lab supplies!!)
People like that have gotten kicked out of my research group. For a variety of reasons, other PIs in my department have been more tolerant.
To be clear, I don't begrudge those who can come in, do their 8-5 M-F, and get results. I simply can't do that. What I don't like to see are slackers that barely get by their classes, do a crappy job teaching, get virtually no research accomplished and then still get a Ph.D. from LargeU.
You know the type of grad student I'm talking about. I'm sure you can elaborate.
