Shmesearch

I'm almost there. After only 3 grueling years, I'm just one week away from not earning a Master's Degree. It's so close that I can practically not taste it.

You see, on the path to get a PhD, you have to pass a couple of milestones. One of them is called the "Research Exam". It's a giant paper survey in which you read a million billion gazillion pavillion cotillion research papers and then write them up succinctly in 9000 words or less. I've spent most of the summer doing mine. Last summer I worked at Google and made ridiculous money. Just thought I'd mention.

Anyway, the Research Exam is somewhat special. Though it's tons of work, after you finish it you have the option of getting a Master's Degree on the way to your PhD*.
(* Offer not valid for losers who decided to get a Master's Degree first before going to get their PhD because they couldn't get in anywhere good and didn't wanna go get a real job instead)

So even though I don't get a Master's Degree, I still have to do the freaking Research Exam. A pessimist would say I get no reward for all my hard work. An optimist would say that I got my reward 3 years ago, and have been able to enjoy it this whole time (I asked an optimist and he assured me this is what he would say). I prefer to think of it in another way: after I complete my Research Exam, the university will travel backward in time and award it to me 3 years ago. This way I still get something for my effort, and it only violates causality a little bit.

Most students you talk to about the Research Exam are very casual about it. "Oh yeah, it's just a giant book report. It's a lot of work, but it's easy." But of course, Professors like to "motivate you to do your best," which is secret code for "spur you into action through fear and intimidation." So my advisor is making my exam sound much more important than anyone else seems to think it is. From hearing him talk, the exam will foreshadow my entire future research career, and that of all my descendants. Its impact will echo throughout time and space, and a couple other dimensions we haven't discovered yet. It will cause the creation or destruction of countless alien worlds, and single-handedly determine who wins the final battle between good and evil. So my slides need to be really REALLY good.

The biggest beef I have with it is just that I've done nothing else this whole summer. I wake up in the morning and spend all day working on my exam, then I go home and sleep and wake up the next day and work on my exam. I constantly worry that the result I turn in is garbage, and that my advisor will tell me that I'm not cut out to be a researcher. More and more I have daydreams where I'm in my Research Exam presentation and at the end they tell me that everything I've done is worthless and just start laughing at my complete ineptitude, and then I start cussing everyone out and run out of the room and leave the state and start my life over as a potato farmer. I've never seen a potato in the wild before, but I bet I could take it.

Your reward for reading through this far is that I will now pelt you with a plethora of potato puns:

I'm going to try to grow the world's smallest potatoes, one millionth the normal size...
I'll call them mu-taters.

Or I could arrange them all in a grid and only sell them line by line...
Then they'd be row-taters.

Or maybe I could just put little pairs of glasses on them...
Then they'd be spec-taters.

Then I could start them on the path to becoming doctors...
And I'd have a bunch of pre-med-itaters.

At their interviews they'd need nice clothes, so I'd buy them expensive jeans...
So they'd be levi-taters.

Some I would treat as royalty, but the rest would just be common-taters.

If I got lonely some nights then the unlucky ones would become dick-taters (They'll get it right in the eyes!)

But don't worry, I'd treat those ones especially well. I'd take them all on a cruise...
On my dick-tater-ship.