Why does the field of academia place such unreasonable and unhealthy work standards on graduate students?
One of the department secretaries did the usual “blehhhhh Monday” spiel to me on our elevator ride this morning, then was like “well, you guys are probably here all weekend and don’t even know what day it is!”
When I first got to this school, one of the senior faculty told all the incoming chemistry grad students that “there’s no such thing as a 40-hour work week in grad school”. Then went on to imply 60-80 hours would be the norm.
Grad students are overworked and underpaid. Why is this treated as normal and expected? It’s unreasonable and toxic.
