Life of a EE grad student

Its 4 in the morning. Its white all around. The crunch of the snow underneath my foot keep me company on my walk home. Its 17 degree below zero. There sidewalk is frozen solid underneath the snow. Had it not been for the snow, the ice would have been twice as dangerous. On some nights, there is no snow and the ice is treacherous. I have no tracion, and sometimes find myself standing at the same spot trying to avoid a fall.

And yet I never take the cab home. The university provides free cab rides to students after 2 in the morning, because thats when the buses stop running. Its just that the cabs take 20-30 minutes of waiting time, and since it takes me about 20 minutes of a leisurely stroll to get home, I dont see the point in waiting. Of course, now that I know more people, I get a ride back very often, but only if I am leaving by midnight or so.

The cold is very refreshing, especially since I spend from 10 in the morning to 3 or 4 the next morning hunched over a computer. I generally do longer hours than most of my colleagues, largely because I am so far behind them. When I was in DCE, I never understood any of the Electronics basics. I barely passed those classes. I attribute it mostly to lack of interest and poor quality of professors. I never quite understood KCL and KVL till about fourth semester or so. When I arrived, I didn't know anything about transistor theory, did not have any experience with transistor design, and in my three years in Infineon, I moved as far from those fundamental concepts as could have been possible.

I sit in an empty library, surrounded by a few familiar faces long after the crowd has left. And most of these faces are EECS majors. Given a 10AM-3AM day, I put in 17 hours every weekday and close to 10 hour days on weekends.. These are my 100 hour weeks. Now I have gotten to a point where I can no longer sleep. On the rare days I come back early, I still stay up till 3-4 wasting time - doing nothing. I wonder from time to time, if all this will be worth it.

In terms of what I have learned, its already worth it. It is an incredible sense of achievement what this kind of drudgery will do to your skills. I am more concerned about how this will fit into my career. I have very high expectations from the industry, so high that I am sure I will be disappointed - which is a strange cocktail of feelings. What I expect is nothing short of a quantum leap in my standard of living and not the gradual next step.

The costs have been great. Above all the cost to my health. I am concerned. I get no exercise. And I eat crap. I have cooked less than 5% of the meals I have eaten in the US. Its the price I paid to do well. I feel I am falling apart, I cant even climb a flight of stairs without panting. Its horrible, and I know I need to do something about it. But I dont have the strength, When will I work out? At 3 in the morning? I have thought about it. Well, didnt get me far.