Collegiate Memes for Struggling PhD Students With Cup-O-Noodles for Lunch and One Brain Cell Left

Jesse Kessenheimer • Writer and Editor

Mar 30, 2023 1:30 PM EDT

After 20 years of schooling, you'd think that folks who got their Master's degree would be done with the whole world of academia– but wait, there's more! Any PhD student will tell you that they didn't choose this life, they simply fell into a lifestyle of mild poverty, exclusively nerdy friends, second-guessing, and 80hr work weeks. They might be studying something well-known like child psychology or oceanography, but then you have those niche-of-the-niche students who study exotic frogs of the French Riviera or botanical wonders of underwater volcanoes. Those people are the ones who have to explain to their relatives every holiday exactly what it is they do everyday in a lab coat with goggles on– trust me, we don't even know what we're doing. Even if you're still fired up about the subject you chose, there's no way you'll be spending an ounce of your free time outside of the lab or neck deep in papers to be talking about Indonesian watersheds between 1980 and 1990 or typical cloud formations of southern Californian winters. Hang in there everybody, apparently it doesn't get easier.