After having overcome the infamous GRE, that test which inhabits many an undergraduate nightmare, my applications for graduate programs are a step closer to completion.

With one semester left, I can see the light at the end of the tunnel…

Perhaps leading to another tunnel: Grad school.

After getting in contact with a professor from my target program, I was invited to sit in on a grad seminar. This particular class was focused on climate change.

This is by no means the definitive grad seminar experience, but rather a personal, anecdotal one. These are the things that surprised me about sitting in on my first grad seminar.

Long before the actual sit in, I was emailed the article which the class would discuss. The professor told me that I did not need to read the article, but I could if I wanted to.

And so, long before the seminar had begun, my disillusionment began. The article was a certain scholarly article on the 1995 Chicago Heat Wave, spanning nearly 50 pages of research and analysis. Coming from a background of studying Literature, 50 pages is not necessarily a lot of reading, but for scholarly work, it is. Most of the literary criticism that I have used has been in under 20 pages long. My first glimpses of graduate school homework…

On the day of the class, there was nobody to be found in or around the classroom, there weren’t even any lights on! Ah, I see! So this is what grad school is all about… just a dark classroom without any students. Before long, I learned that the class often started around ten minutes late. Ten minutes late!? I’ve had undergrad classes start late, but for ten minutes to be the usual? Once again, this is only a microcosm… I’m sure there are plenty of grad seminars starting ten minutes EARLY, for all I know.

I then realized that the class was very small. Including myself, there were only four students, and two running late, who couldn’t find parking (parking! Of course you can’t find parking! Get outta bed scarf down that Big Mac and get to class, you hooligans!)

Everyone, including the professor, has a laptop open! In my usual classes, students use good ol' fashioned notebooks. I was the only one sitting with a pen and my article printed out. Already, I began to show my incompetence. Printing out 50 pages and coming to a class about Climate Change. Really? Do you know how many trees you’ve just killed?

I joke, I joke.

Once the discussion had begun, I realized that the professor put much more stock into what the students had to say. It seemed to me that each one of the other students was an expert in training, in their own right. I could tell that each of them had done much research on the subject, and the professor often let them teach the rest of us something.

I realized that the discussion was much more interdisciplinary than those of my undergrad classes. In discussing the Chicago Heat Wave, the discussion traversed the sciences, architecture, sociology, and political analysis.

The last to note as far as first impressions was the length of the class. The class lasted for nearly three hours, but felt as though it flew by. I can imagine many graduate students scoffing with their feelings of exhaustion towards their classes.

But as for me, sitting in on the seminar was a great, stimulating, experience, making me even more motivated for grad school.