Awful grad students.

You know what’s bad?  Know-it-all grad students, who tell you “how academia really works”.

Usually, they seem to have seen something that’s very dysfunctional, and then generalize from there.

One (white) (female) 1^st year grad student whose eyes weren’t quite right, and had worked while doing her masters in some dean’s office at an American university in another country, said she got to see tenure appointments and searches, and how offers weren’t given because so-and-so doesn’t like so-and-so, and so on, for like every appointment and search.

“But I'm glad to know what I’m up against!”, she said, brightly.  “It’s better to know that now.”