How to Not Drop Out of Graduate School

You may have noticed that as of late, our posting frequency has declined. Part of that has been a lack of good material, part has been an excess of trips (backpacking! Spain! Other exciting destinations like Ottawa!), but the biggest part has being trying to find the answer to the title of this blog post: how the hell to not drop out of graduate school. Meaghan just finished her 3rd year of not-dropping-out, and Amy just finished her first, so at this point we're kind of becoming experts in this whole "not abandoning ship" thing, but the past few months have really put that to the test. There's a lot of reasons to drop out, and a lot of reasons not to drop out - the pros and cons lists of graduate school isn't what we're here to discuss, but rather the ways you stay just barely afloat right up until you're rescued by graduating.

Trigger warning: we will be discussing some of the aspects of depression and anxiety that go hand-in-hand with graduate school.

Poster Session Drinking Game

Poster sessions are the first part of the day when it's socially acceptable to drink at a conference (don't try it earlier, people think you're weird, don't ask how we know). Poster sessions are also one of the strangest people-watching experiences outside of Vegas (and yes, that year SVP was in Vegas at the same time as the porn convention was one of the greatest people-watching collisions of all time).

With SVP scale bars, naturally

The interactions you have at a poster session will stay with you for the rest of your life (good or bad), so we've decided to formalize your drinking and people-watching experience with a drinking game.