prospective students

We had two prospective students come so far. The last one comes this week. The first one was so naive I could hardly stand it. Granted she went to a school that did not have any animal research in her area but she seemed really clueless about how labs operate. For instance her questions included: 1) What do you do in the summer? 2) What was my favorite part of grad school? (uh hem:LOL in my head!) 3) How is studying different? Ok those all aren't terrible questions but if you are planning spending 5+ years of your life in grad school you might want to do some research about what it is like ahead of time. Volunteer in similar type labs (even if it isn't in 'your' department), look for volunteer/scholar research jobs for the summer, or just visit a school with graduate students so you can see what their life is like.
I answered all of her questions nicely and professionally but she just didn't seem to know what graduate school was all about. 1) continue to work; sometime teach as well; 2) favorite part? that just seemed ridiculous to me. Grad school is not summer camp! But collecting real data, and then figuring out what that means is enjoyable and one of the things I like about lab life. so I said something along those lines.
3)I won't bore you w/ details but I tried to explain that they are very different. Classes you take but are not the priority. The the main learning you do about particular topics is up to yourself and you need to be READING background about topics that fit your research.

The second candidate was very professional and asked good questions retaining to our research, lab future goals, program requirements, etc. So I preferred candidate #2 so far but we still have one more. I hope I'm not being to curmudgeonly about candidate #1. I could just be getting old and bitter.

I ended up only having to drive to the far airport once Yay and I can get gas money! No money for all of the meals though.