In graduate school, I was a student of E.L. Doctorow, and he had us read 'Moby-Dick' in a week.

...your zeal to face life's rough and tumble, your ardor to accept the responsibilities of adulthood is hardly congruent with the aspirations of most graduate students...' He shook his head of disagreeable hair. 'I need not tell you,' he deplored, sinking to paralipsis, 'that there resides in almost every one of 'em the unconscious desire not to grow up. For once the academic goal is attained and the doctorate irradicably abbreviated after the name, the problem of facing the world is confronted. The subtlest, most unremitting drive of the student is his unconscious proclivity to postpone the acceptance of responsibility as long as possible.

So in my uncertainty, I went to graduate school and there it all happened.

The whole thing reminds me of graduate school seminars, except these people are smart and funny and have something interesting to say.

Graduate school is a place to hide for a couple of years.

In 2010, I was doing pretty well. I was going to go to graduate school.